


A Gift of a Heart

by Alexa_Piper



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Danny and Vlad's relationship is purely platonic so there's nothing nasty there people, Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, Halfa Maddie, Happy Ending, Identity Reveal, Slow build to a revelation, The first chapter is Cordria's oneshot and the rest is my work, backdated fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 54,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22418614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper
Summary: A bank robbery goes wrong and Maddie takes a bullet straight through her heart. She dies. Or, at least, that's what she thinks.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jack Fenton & Maddie Fenton, Danny Fenton & Vlad Masters, Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton
Comments: 29
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nova Shots chapter 81 - A Gift of a Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/553783) by Cordria. 



It didn't hurt nearly as much as she was expecting.

Maddie stared at her fingers, covered in blood, then down to the hole on her chest. Right over her heart. There was a strange silence in her ears. Her heart wasn't beating. Maybe someone was screaming.

Danny? Her eyes came up, the world already fading away, looking for her son. Body rapidly going numb and limp, she collapsed.

Darkness claimed her. Cold hands seemed to grab her shoulders and tug her towards her afterlife, pull her soul though a doorway ripped into Heaven, and drop her onto a bed of clouds.

Then there was the nothingness of death.

Forever passed. Or maybe just seconds. Then there was something again. Sensation. A pressure on her back. A coldness lancing through her soul. And the strange quiet of not having a heartbeat.

Somehow her eyes opened. Green. Fuzzy. Empty.

Her hand moved, coming up to press against her face. To rub at her eyes. She could feel her skin, warm and pliable. She could smell her perfume, just a little. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Slowly she sat up. It hurt, the same deep kind of ache that the elderly get used to and live with the rest of their days. She reached up with white fingers to touch the hole in her shirt, to run her fingers over the dried blood crusting the light blue fabric. Again – pain. But not the sharp agony of a wound. Her hands undid a few of the buttons, fingers clumsy, and peered down at her chest.

Brown, dried blood was smeared everywhere. But through the crusty blood, she could see a green spot where the bullet had entered her chest. Spidery veins trailed away from it, snaking across her pale chest like a web. Her fingers poked and prodded. The web was cold; her skin was warm.

"Maddie?"

Suddenly becoming aware of her surroundings, she looked up. The world was green and upside down. Doorways floated overhead and bits of rock rose into the sky like balloons. And crouched nearby, face trapped in a strange expression, was the ghost she should have been expecting. He'd been plaguing her for over a year, after all.

"How are you feeling?"

She let her shirt fall closed, bringing her hand up to run through her hair. It was strange, feeling her skin move slightly and the firmness of bones underneath. She didn't think ghosts had that kind of internal structure. She had been expecting something different, although she wasn't sure what.

"Maddie? Do you remember what happened?"

Dragging her focus back to the ghost, she blinked at him. "Why are you here?"

Phantom started down at his hands. "I… wanted to make sure you were alright," he muttered.

She stared at him, startled. The ghost was a powerful creature and – from all her records – confident and cocky. The creature crouched a half-dozen feet away looked shy and broken. It was such a complete 180 change, that she shook her head in confusion. "Why?"

"I…" The ghost broke off with a dismal shrug, looking away. "It's complicated." Then he winced.

Letting her eyes drift away from the ghost – she quietly checked herself, she'd have to stop referring to him that way now that she was dead as well – she gazed down at her fingers. She moved her fingers around, watching the interplay of muscle and bone and skin. It looked so _real_. She was already rewriting a lot of her theories about ghosts in her head.

"Do you remember what happened?" Phantom pressed. He scooted a bit closer, his green eyes wide and earnest.

"I was at the bank," she murmured, still more interested in her hands than the ghost before her. She reached over and picked up a rock, tossing it up and down a few times. "And there was a bank robber…" she trailed off, the rock falling to the ground as she remembered. "My son. Danny." Her eyes jerked up, caught on Phantom's. "My son! What happened to Danny!?"

The ghost waved his hand placating. "He's fine, I promise. You remember? You got shot?"

Her hand touched the greenish hole through her chest. "Yeah," she whispered. Her mind was still full of images of her son. What he would have to deal with, having watched his mother die. Danny was a strong boy, but she knew how sensitive he was on the inside. This would destroy him. The world started to blur with tears as she thought about it. She wanted desperately to go to him, to find a way out of this world of green and doors and find him… but she was dead. Ghosts shouldn't be in the human world. She knew that deep down in her heart.

"It went through your heart," Phantom said softly.

"I died."

The ghost hesitated. He shifted, looking flustered. "See, I pulled you into the ghost zone after you got shot. Your heart was gone. Blasted into a hundred pieces. You were dying."

She was still and quiet. Her gaze went back down to her hands. To her wedding ring. A pang of hurt went through her at the loss of her best friend, but she just stared at the wedding band. Why was it still on her hand? Hadn't she died and left it behind?

"Maddie," the ghost said, his voice starting and stopping a few times. "See... I… You… It wasn't your time to die. You weren't supposed to, in the bank."

"So?" She listened to her breath in her lungs. To the gurgle of her stomach. To the solid warmth of the gold ring. And a sickening, terrible sensation landed in her chest. Something was wrong. Something was _very_ wrong.

"I didn't want you to die." Phantom sounded like he was near tears. His hands were moving, clenching, almost like he wanted to reach out and grab her. "So I brought you here."

She looked at him. Stared into his eyes that were red-rimmed and raw. His face was a mask of pain and fear. She didn't ask any questions, she just waited, her mind lost and empty of thought.

"And I made you a heart," he whispered.

Her warm, human fingers came up to press at the cold hole in her chest. A cold spike driven through her soul. She shivered.

"You're still alive," he told her, his voice desperate for her to believe. "You have a ghost heart moving your blood around. Keeping you alive." He crept forwards another few inches. "Maddie… you're not dead."

_I'm not dead._ The thought curled through her mind like a slow and steady breeze. It chased away everything else until she was surrounded by nothing but the silence of her nonexistent heartbeat.

"Say something," came a whisper.

She couldn't find anything to say.

" _Please_."

Her eyes blinked. She watched a door drift past. "You gave me a heart," she said slowly, almost as if she didn't understand what the words meant.

"Yeah," the ghost said. He slid forwards a few more inches. It wouldn't take long before he would be sitting in her lap. There was something desperate and broken in his green eyes.

"A ghost heart."

"Ghost energy seems to make human tissue grow faster," he said after a moment. "Your own heart will grow back if you give it time."

"Time," she repeated dully.

"Yeah. You'll have to stay in the ghost zone, but it's not so bad in here." Phantom's voice was cajoling and pleading, almost like a child trying to explain why he should be allowed to have just one more cookie before supper. "You just have to wait."

She stared at her surroundings, trying her best to grasp everything. She was alive – in a way. Her heart was some creation out of ectoplasm. Her movements were restricted to the ghost world. No doubt just one step into the human world and her heart would disintegrate, not having enough energy to survive without the environment of the ghost world.

"There's places you can live. I'll bring you food, and water…"

This was wrong. Her fingers pressed at her chest, desperate for the feel of a pulse under her skin. A voice in the back of her head was screaming that this wasn't right. This wasn't _natural_. Something like this – a creature that was part alive and part dead, a human body with a ghost heart – shouldn't exist. _Couldn't_ exist.

"Maddie?"

The feeling pervaded every nerve in her body. It ran up and down her arms like spiders, crawled around her spine like caterpillars, and stung her legs like a hive of hornets. It was instinct, buried so deep that she didn't even comprehend why it was. Just _that_ it was.

She shouldn't exist. This wasn't right.

"Maddie?!" Perhaps the ghost saw something in her face, in her eyes. His voice had ratcheted up a few notches.

"This is wrong," she whispered. "You shouldn't have done this."

It wasn't that she wanted to die. Far from it. The thought of seeing her children again, her husband, sent rainbows of happiness through her mind. This was her chance to survive and she was, if nothing else, a survivor. A thin rope thrown to her through impossible happenstances and she was more than happy to grab a hold on it. She hated the thought of dying.

But she shouldn't be alive. It was wrong in so many different ways. Feelings welled up inside of her, feelings she didn't understand or agree with. Thoughts of death. A horrible and unwanted drive to finish dying, like she was supposed to.

It was the natural order of things. To be born, to live, to die. This part-ghost thing wasn't part of the order. Wasn't part of nature. It shouldn't exist. It needed to _stop_ existing – and she knew it on such an instinctive level that she hated it, but knew she couldn't fight it. This thing that she was, this not-quite-human, was dangerous. Against the laws of nature. Something that could break the universe.

She couldn't be allowed to exist.

"No, no, it's okay," Phantom whispered. He'd gotten close enough to pick up her hand, to squeeze her fingers as if to reassure himself that she was still there.

"No, it's not." How could she contemplate killing herself? Her hands shook as she pulled them free of the ghost's grasp. Why should she want to die? What terrible thing was this inside of her, pushing her towards death? Never once in her life had she thought of suicide, only now it pulsed through her every thought, driven by instincts she didn't know she had.

She didn't want to die. Yet she knew, in her soul, that she would kill herself. She had to. Such a thing as her couldn't exist in the world.

"Yeah, it is," the ghost was saying. "See, I'm part human too. And part ghost. I'm like you, kind of. And it's okay." He touched her arm, her shoulder, her leg. Butterfly touches.

She stared at him. The dark thing inside of her, reaching out with demanding claws and fangs to demand her death, stopped in its tracks. "What?" she breathed.

The ghost touched her hand again. She didn't move to pull it away. "I almost died, over a year ago. But I didn't. I'm a ghost and a human." His voice hadn't left the pleading, childish tones.

She shuddered. The thing inside of her arched backwards away from the ghost. The part-ghost. The _thing_ sitting before her, casually breaking all the laws of the universe. Unnatural. Not right. It made her chest twist and clench.

Her head started to shake. It refused to stop moving back and forth.

"It's okay," the ghost said again. He smiled at her, a strange half-smile that clashed with this red-rimmed eyes and the tear streaks on his face. "I'm going to take you somewhere safe, okay? And I'll tell you all about how I ended up like this. You'll be fine, you'll see."

She gazed at him, broken and lost, still numbly shaking her head.

"Come on." He got to his feet and reached out a hand for her to grab. To pull her to her feet.

She didn't know what else to do. The thing inside of her demanded her death. Her mind and soul wanted herself to live. And an unnatural creature was offering her a safe place to think. Slowly, she reached out her hand. Her body shivered when it touched the wrongness of the half-ghost's hand.

The ghost smiled – a real smile.

"You'll be fine," he said again as he pulled her to her feet. "I promise."

She wasn't so sure.


	2. Chapter 2

The Ghost Zone knew no such thing as temperature.

Maddie had never noticed it before, although she and Jack had undertaken several brief expeditions into the ghosts' domain. Some small part of her mind supplied the thought that they had been insulated within the speeder during those trips, and she supposed that it would have been enough to protect them from this phenomenon. Now, her body was tingling, uncertain whether to feel hot or cold – the only source of temperature was coming from the unusual teenager that carried her.

She asked Phantom about it and he shrugged. "I'm not a scientist," the creature said, before refocusing on the task of carrying the wounded woman through the void. Initially, Maddie had protested at such treatment – she was far too close to the ghost/human/thing for her liking – but Phantom had given her a look that brooked no argument and hoisted her onto his back.

A curious sensation was tugging at Maddie's chest, rooting itself deep within her. The initial physical shock of having ectoplasm grafted to her body was wearing off, and only now did she realise that it was spreading, the spectral energy seeping through her veins and slowly tainting the rest of her body.

The pain was also returning.

To take her mind off the sharp ache that throbbed with every breath, Maddie tightened her hold around Phantom's shoulders and voiced the question that this new sensation brought. "You said that you would tell me how you became a human-ghost. Was it similar to what you've done to me?"

Phantom shook his head, one hand moving to his neck in an effort to loosen the huntress' grasp. "No, nobody turned me into a halfa," he responded. "Like I said, it was an accident."

"You never said that," Maddie retorted. "All you said was that you nearly died, but you didn't."

"The particulars of my near-death aren't important," Phantom snapped, both hands now trying to ease the pressure on his throat.

Finally, she was on familiar ground. The tension radiating from Phantom was comforting in its normalcy, and Maddie realised belatedly that she should probably adjust her grip so she wasn't choking a creature that obviously needed to breathe.

The fact that he actually needed to breathe still didn't sit quite right with Maddie. His breaths were shallow and infrequent, occurring once every thirty seconds to a minute, but they were definitely required for him to function. Beneath her fingers, the woman had also felt a sluggish pulse in Phantom's neck.

She adjusted her grip, the sheer wrongness of the entire situation making Maddie shudder.

"Are you okay?" Phantom queried, obviously feeling the involuntary movement.

Maddie shook her head numbly, wondering at the unveiled concern in his voice. He almost seemed to care, as though his relationship with the woman went deeper than her pointing an ectogun and him making some lame joke about it. The throb of pain in her torso was becoming overwhelming as her nerves finally registered that something was unnaturally _wrong,_ and Maddie struggled to keep herself from sobbing. This was wrong. Phantom shouldn't exist, and neither should she.

A new thought sent terror washing through her.

"Are there more human-ghosts?" the huntress rasped.

"Yeah," Phantom responded instantly, the question catching him off-guard, "and we call ourselves halfas. It's easier to say than human-ghost."

There were more.

Maddie felt like screaming. Phantom's unusual power levels, his uncharacteristic emotional displays, that obviously living physiology – they made him unpredictable. Unpredictability was dangerous, especially in an enemy.

Phantom seemed to sense her distress. "There are only two others," he clarified. "One of us is a bit of a loner, and she hangs out in the Ghost Zone a lot because her form's unstable. The other one isn't that much of an issue to humanity because all he cares about is grinding me into the dust and attacking my family, but I can handle him. Don't worry, you're not suddenly gunna have to deal with an invasion of halfas or anything like that."

Relief flooded through her, and Maddie let out a whispered "thank goodness."

If he heard the comment, Phantom didn't respond.

They paused in front of a purple door not unlike the hundreds of others that littered the place. On the front, a sloppy replica of Phantom's symbol had been painted in ectoplasm, the substance branding the wood beneath it.

"What's this?" Maddie breathed, trying to keep her mind off the searing pain and seeping cold on her front.

"A safe place," Phantom responded, opening the door and floating into what appeared to be a living room. "It's an abandoned lair. I cleaned it out about a year ago and adopted it in case I ever needed a safe house."

He floated down the hallway, entering a sparse bedroom with whitewashed walls and starched blankets. Maddie was laid on the bed gently, but the tug beneath her ribs forced an involuntary cry through her lips.

"Sorry!" Phantom exclaimed, hands fluttering across her shoulders and arms. Butterfly touches again, as though he wanted to scoop her into an embrace and never let go.

For the first time, Maddie noticed that the halfa was streaked with blood.

His boots and gloves were barely recognisable for the white that they had once been, and dark splotches on the black suit glistened wetly. Phantom saw her looking, and sighed as he produced a first aid kit from the dresser. "All of it's yours," he confirmed. "Danny wasn't hurt."

Frowning at the ceiling, Maddie wondered how this kid knew what she was fretting over. It almost seemed like he had some sort of unfair advantage, as though he knew her but she didn't know him. This thought unsettled the woman further, and she wrestled with the concept that she was such a fundamental part of Phantom's life.

Gentle fingers tugged apart her shirt, lightly pressing a pad of gauze over the glowing green that plugged her bullet hole. "Hold this here," he ordered, guiding Maddie's fingers up to press against the pad. "Your body's trying to reject the ectoplasm, but that should settle soon enough. That gauze should hold it in until it sets properly."

"Is that why it hurts so much?" the question was out before she could stop it. For a moment, Maddie berated herself for showing such weakness – such _longing_ for life – in front of her foe. She met Phantom's gaze, and the glow in his eyes had dimmed.

He was… crying?

Another tear slipped from his lashes and down a pale cheek, leaving behind a trail that glowed faintly. Maddie could only watch in silence, her capacity for strange things completely used up by this point. On top of everything else, Phantom's tears over her predicament were enough to shut down the woman's mental capabilities completely. No theories sprang to mind, and no words magically rolled off her tongue.

The scientist in her was overloaded, and plain old Maddie Fenton was all that remained.

"I'm sorry," the teen whispered, sitting on the mattress beside her and removing his gloves to lace cool fingers within her own. Maddie didn't move away, watching in fascination as he continued to cry. Yes, his eyes had been red-rimmed and his face tear-streaked when she had woken, but the cause for those tears could still be debated. That the halfa was crying here, while she was awake and in pain, gave one concept a jarring amount of evidence.

For whatever reason, Phantom cared what happened to her.

Eager to learn more about the creature that she had been saved by – after all, Phantom _had_ saved her, regardless of what his motive was – Maddie watched as the tears streamed down his cheeks, and sobs began to shake the wiry frame. He made no move to wipe away the tears, and they fell from his chin and nose and lashes to drip onto the sheets, leaving behind little glowing spots.

Another horrible thought, this one even worse than the last, made itself known.

"Am I going to be a halfa forever?"

Phantom's expression was one of absolute misery. "I don't know," he sobbed, fingers tightening around her own. "I honestly don't know."


	3. Chapter 3

Maddie woke to the smell of pizza.

Without opening her eyes she yawned luxuriously, wondering at the scent. If there was pizza, it meant that somebody's day had been exceptionally bad. The tradition reached back to college, when any time that their experiments failed miserably or more funds were cut, the only way to cheer the two boys up had been with pizza. One Maddie and Jack were raising a family, the tradition had been added upon with brown creaming soda (Jazz's contribution) and ice-cream cake (this one had been Danny's idea).

Wondering whose life had been met with catastrophe, Maddie opened her eyes and sat up. In an unfamiliar bed. In a plain, white room. With a freezing chunk sending bolts of pain through her chest.

Crying out, the woman lurched forwards, pressing hands against the space where her heart should be. As the pain dulled back to an aching throb, she waited for the familiar beat of an organ that was no longer there.

Phantom poked his head through the open door, brow creased in that inexplicable worry. "Are you okay?" Her withering glare had the halfa looking at his toes. "Sor- _ry_ , it's a standard question," he muttered.

That tone pressed against Maddie's mind like a leaden weight. Everything about this kid screamed harmless-if-slightly-obnoxious teenager, and the more the woman stared, the less she could see in terms of a dangerous creature from beyond the grave. If the kid ditched the hazmat and somehow managed to stop glowing, he'd fit right in at the local high school.

Phantom sighed when Maddie didn't speak. "Look, while you were asleep, I went and got some dinner. Do you think you can walk?"

Her body screamed no, but her mind quailed at the thought of showing even the slightest weakness against this particular person. "I can handle it," Maddie insisted, swinging her feet over the edge of the bed and trying to hold back a grimace.

The ghost was by her side in a flash of light, and Maddie jerked away from him at the unexpected teleportation. "I said I can handle it," she said in her best 'listen to me because I'm the mum' voice. True to her hypothesis, the teen pulled back slightly. His hands fluttered though the air as though unsure before their movements settled, folding casually across his chest.

"The dining room's just across the hall," he supplied as she took her first step.

The pain ripped through Maddie's chest in a jolt, but she refrained from letting her discomfort show. Instead, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Maddie was dimly aware that the spectral teen was following right behind her, but to her relief he didn't make contact.

Upon entering the room across the hall, the woman collapsed into the nearest chair, breathing in shallow gasps. She could have sworn that Phantom muttered something about her usual stubbornness, but through the haze of pain Maddie couldn't be entirely certain.

The huntress waited until her breathing slowed back to normal, fully aware of the boy nervously standing beside her. Once her breaths were completely under control and the throbbing diminished, Maddie opened her eyes, looked at the table, and froze.

Pizza, brown creaming soda, and an ice cream cake.

"Won't it melt?" Maddie blurted, her mouth spewing the first thought to cross her stunned mind.

Phantom lifted his hand in response and wriggled gloved fingers, grinning mischievously as ice crystals formed in the air around his fingernails. "I wouldn't worry about that," he responded.

Somehow, this kid knew the inner workings of the Fenton family. Maddie dimly registered that his suit was no longer covered in her blood as she struggled to comprehend how this impossible creature knew such an important family tradition of hers.

"Are you one of Danny's school friends?" she breathed.

Phantom stiffened. "Um, I-I know Danny, if that's what you're asking." He seemed to not know where to put his hands – rubbing the back of his neck, folding and unfolding lanky arms, running gloved fingers through a mess of white hair – and his eyes looked everywhere except the huntress' face. "Why d'you ask?"

Maddie gestured to the food. "You know our bad day tradition."

"Oh, that." The kid let out a laugh that was a little more boisterous than necessary. "Yeah, Danny told everyone in the class about that when we were sharing family values and talking about different cultures and things we hold on to and stuff like that. I went to get food when you fell asleep, and remembered that he'd said you guys have this stuff when you have a bad day, so I thought you'd like to have it now because becoming a halfa was certainly one of the worst days _I've_ ever had."

He was babbling. Maybe Maddie could use that to her advantage. "So, you're in my son's class?" she asked, trying to keep her tone nonchalant.

He finally met her gaze. "Maybe."

"Stop trying to be mysterious," Maddie told him, "you just make yourself look stupid."

"But a virtually unique creature such as myself _should_ be mysterious," Phantom countered, puffing out his chest somewhat childishly.

How did she even end up having this conversation?

Turning her focus to the table, Maddie smirked. "I think you got a tad much," she commented, gesturing to the four large pizza boxes.

"Well, I usually eat three," he muttered, sitting in the chair next to her. Maddie tensed at the proximity, but if Phantom noticed, he made no comment.

"How can you eat that much? There's not enough space in your stomach!"

Phantom flushed, his cheeks turning light green. "Um, most of it gets turned straight into spectral energy and stored as ectoplasm. Only the last couple of slices actually feed my human body."

"So you _do_ have a human form."

"I thought that we'd already established that," the teen grumbled, reaching for a slice of pizza and foregoing his plate entirely.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What's your human form?"

Phantom choked on his mouthful, hunching over the table and coughing violently. After a few seconds Maddie started to thump him on the back, and it took a couple more breaths before his fit subsided. "Please," Phantom rasped, "don't ask me that."

Maddie was instantly furious. How dare he? This creature had dragged her into the Ghost Zone and to his lair. He expected her to trust him enough to stay there while ectoplasm slowly tainted her entire body, and to blindly eat and drink whatever was offered. For all they knew, this new heart could be turning Maddie into a hybrid! How dare he even _think_ that he had a right to keep such information to himself?!

"Phantom," the woman ground out, struggling to keep her voice level, "please be reasonable here. I'm trying to trust you, but you have to give me something to go on."

The halfa went very still, his fingers curling tightly around the edge of the table. "I saved your life," he responded in a whisper. "I brought you to my only safe haven, even though all you've ever done is hunt me. Isn't that enough?"

Something within Maddie told her to stop, that the boy was right, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut. "All you've ever done is terrorise the town!"

"I fight off the real threat!" He was on the verge of shouting now. "I keep everyone in Amity Park as safe as I can!"

"Why?! Why do you care? For all we know, you're just having fun with your ghostly buddies!"

He stood so forcefully that the chair clattered to the floor. "I give a damn because it's _my_ fault that the portal started working in the first place!"

As Phantom's words registered in Maddie's stunned brain, a look of horror crossed his face. He took a step back, eyes darting to the door as if he was debating whether he could make it before someone shot him.

"Wait-"

He was gone as soon as she opened her mouth.

Maddie leaned back in her chair, fingers pressed against her lips. Her eyes began to burn, and the huntress felt like she was going to scream.

Phantom fought the ghosts because he thought that it was his fault.

Guilt slammed into her like a bulldozer, and the first tear spilled down the woman's cheek. Phantom was just a kid, but he obviously dedicated his life to doing what he thought was right. He had a human form, and since Maddie had seen him fighting at all hours of the day, his human life would surely suffer from the constant call of duty.

The kid dedicated himself to protecting the citizens of Amity Park from something that he felt responsible for. Technically, he was doing Maddie's job. Visions flashed through her mind of the suddenly frail-looking body being thrown against buildings, shot, burned… More tears followed, and Maddie sobbed into her hands as she finally realised that all the kid had ever done was try to keep her safe, and she had hunted him relentlessly for it.

As Maddie continued to cry, melted ice cream dripped of the edge of the table, pooling in a sticky mess on the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

A crash sounded down the hallway. It was followed by a shriek, and then a thump.

Raising her eyes from her book, Maddie frowned in the direction of the door. She hadn't seen Phantom since the disastrous dinner, and everything had been quiet up until now.

After regaining her composure, the woman had forced herself to eat several slices of pizza. Despite having no appetite, Maddie wanted to heal as quickly as possible, and if what Phantom said about ectoplasm was true, than it absorbed a lot of energy at a rapid rate. She needed to keep herself well-fed and well-rested.

She had collected the remaining pizzas and placed them in a fridge in the adjoining kitchen, reasoning that the teenager would need to eat soon. On her way back to her bedroom, Maddie snagged a book from one of the hallway bookshelves. She had been expecting some ancient text detailing the secrets of spectral entities or the mysteries of halfas, but upon observation back in her room the cover told a different story. It was just a copy of _Lord of the Flies_ , complete with notes scribbled in the margins and passages highlighted for schoolwork, but thus far the story had provided sufficient distraction from the freezing spike that drove itself deeper into her body with every hour.

The book also provided something to focus on that wasn't Phantom.

Shutting the novel, Maddie sighed, wincing at the pain that shot through her ribs. That shriek had definitely been his, and after her treatment of the teen, the least that the woman could do was make sure that he was alright.

The huntress slowly levered herself out of bed and staggered towards the continued gasps and occasional muffled cry. These noises sounded from the room next to hers, and Maddie gently turned the doorknob and eased it open a crack in order to take a peek at what was going on without alerting the room's occupant.

Phantom was sitting on the bathroom floor, a hand clamped tightly over his mouth in an attempt to silence his latest sob. Tears were sliding down his cheeks as the halfa rummaged through a pile of items that had obviously fallen out of a first aid kit when it had been knocked over or dropped.

Near the middle of his chest, there was a wound rather similar to Maddie's. However, it was as though this job had been rushed – the wound was larger, its shape irregular as opposed to her almost perfect circle. The edges were jagged, as if the implement used to cut had been held by a person that was shaking badly. In addition, where Maddie's wound was covered for the most part by a membrane that wasn't quite as thick or durable as skin, Phantom's wound was not – it wept ectoplasm freely, the viscous substance dripping down Phantom's chest.

It looked fresh at first glance, as though whatever procedure that caused such a mark had been carried out there on the bathroom floor. However, closer inspection revealed inflammation, the skin flushed dark green around the site of injury.

This wound was most likely as old as Maddie's.

Phantom produced a tube from the scattered supplies, uncapping it and gingerly spreading its glowing white contents across his mangled chest. This was accompanied by more cries of pain, and Maddie noted a pile of linen bandages hanging over the side of the bath – they were stained with splotches of green.

He seemed to know what he was doing.

Once again, Maddie's thoughts flashed back to countless fights. Most of the time, Phantom had been attacked from all sides – sure, the ghosts he fought caused quite a bit of damage, but the hunters would be just as bad. Her stomach twisted at the thought, and Maddie clenched her hand tightly around the doorknob as her mind unhelpfully supplied the damage rating for all of their different blasters. Even being _nicked_ by one of those shots would hurt like hell.

The ointment administered, Phantom grabbed a roll of bandages from his supplies. Anchoring one end against his side with a piece of medical tape, the teenager began to wind the fresh bandage around his torso, sobbing as he twisted to pass the roll across his back.

Maddie had seen enough.

She shoved the door open, standing with hands on hips and a stern expression as Phantom jumped in surprise.

"Mu-Maddie, what-?"

"Let me help," the woman sighed, kneeling beside the hero with a wince at the tug in her own chest. "What on earth caused such a horrible injury?"

A part of her screamed that she didn't want to know, but Maddie pushed this thought away as she tugged the roll from Phantom's fingers. "Arms up," she ordered, and continued to wrap his chest when the boy obeyed. "Now, why do you need bandages when I don't?"

Phantom hissed as she pulled the fabric snugly over his weeping wound. "I put all my energy into you, keeping only enough the keep me alive."

The woman flinched. Phantom must have been shot when trying to rescue her, and had to heal himself as well…

Oh, hell.

"You were already at the bank," Maddie said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to get there in time to save me."

"Why would I have been-?"

"In your human form," she clarified. "You were in your human form to do normal, human things when the robbery occurred. Now hand me the needle and thread I see over there, and I'll stitch this bandage closed.

Phantom hung his head and did as she asked. "Yeah," he whispered, "I was there."

He had saved her despite being shot in the chest himself.

"Thank you for rescuing me," Maddie murmured. "It must have been really hard to make a fully-functional heart out of ectoplasm, especially when you're trying to keep yourself alive as well. In fact, wouldn't the stuff in my chest still be using your strength to function right now?"

Phantom shook his head. "I don't know how to make an entire heart," he confessed in a voice even quieter than hers.

"But mine was destroyed, you said so yourself!" the huntress blurted, her fingers tightening around his shoulder. "Explain, then, what…"

Was his wound really caused by a bullet?

Phantom sent the woman a shaky smile as her eyes flicked to his bandaged chest. "I can't make a body part on its own, but if it has enough to latch on to, I can make the rest as sort of a blueprint for the cells to grow around. It'll function well enough as ectoplasm, and degrade as your body replaces it with cells. The great thing is that the cells it attaches to provide enough energy for it to remain functional, so your body's energy is enough now and I don't have to help support it anymore."

No… There was no way he would have, or even _could_ have…

He held up his ungloved hand. "See, you'll notice that about half of this isn't tanned. That's because a friend of mine lost her hand recently in a ghost fight, so I gave her half of mine and then built each of us another half hand out of ectoplasm. The thing is, she's already a halfa, so that's why I don't know how the ectoplasm will affect you. However, there's no rejection of the new human tissue because the ectoplasm sort of cancels that out, which is useful."

"Phantom," Maddie breathed, "what the hell are you saying?"

His small smile faltered as she gripped both shoulders and turned the boy to face her. "Maddie-"

"What the _hell_ did you do?!"

Phantom flinched at her outburst, trying to pull away despite the fingers wrapped around his shoulders like a vice.

One look at her face seemed to convince him.

"I guess I owe it to you to be honest," the teen sighed. He reached up to clasp the huntress' wrists, meeting her eyes fully for the first time since their altercation in the dining room.

"I cut out half of my own human heart and gave it to you."


	5. Chapter 5

Phantom squirmed as Maddie stared at him. "Please say something," the boy whispered.

It was impossible.

"Are you telling me that you sat there and cut out half of your own heart?"

He nodded, and Maddie felt like she had been punched in the gut.

This kid had gouged out half of his own heart to save her, and all Maddie had done since she woke up was treat him badly. She had half a mind to apologise then and there, and would have done so, but the scientist within the woman forced out a different set of words.

"Then why haven't you been in pain?"

Phantom grimaced. "Well, you were unconscious after the transplant for a long time. I had plenty of time to absorb the Ghost Zone's ambient ectoenergy, and to call in a favour or two that the ghosts in the surrounding region owe me. They got off pretty lightly, since all I needed was a bit of a hand from the healer and some actual ectoplasm to eat from the hunter," the teen rambled.

"Still, the pain-"

"A really strong painkiller from the healer," he interrupted. "It stopped my nerves from sending pain signals or something like that."

Maddie stared at this impossible, amazing creature.

For some reason, he cared about her enough to donate half of his heart…

An image flashed across her thoughts of a faceless human boy sitting next to her prone form and ripping open his chest, hunched over and screaming with every breath. His blood – his dark red, _human_ blood – streamed over his hands and clothes and stained the rock beneath him.

She blinked, and his featureless face morphed into one that was startling in its familiarity.

Furrowing her brow, the huntress pushed away the thought. Phantom wasn't Danny – he just _couldn't_ be. Her mind, in its shock, was simply superimposing Danny's familiar and beloved features over the teen in front of her. Something inside her shifted into place, and all Maddie wanted to do was give the kid in front of her a hug, tuck him into bed, and promise that everything would be alright.

She may be a scientist, but Madeline Fenton would always first and foremost be a mother.

Following her sudden maternal instincts, Maddie swept the halfa into her arms. If she stopped to think now, the woman feared that she might faint or cry or do something equally unhelpful. Phantom stiffened at the contact before gingerly returning the embrace, and Maddie rubbed his back gently. "Do your parents know that you're here?"

Phantom pulled away, shaking his head. "Nah, but they won't be worried. Whenever I go off to fight ghosts they don't even notice." He winced as soon as the words left his mouth. "N-not that they're bad parents or anything, but I've gotten really good at sneaking out."

"I guess ghost powers would help," Maddie sighed. She didn't want to upset the boy, but whoever he was, he was just a kid no older than her son. The thought of Danny sneaking out to fight malevolent spectres in the quiet morning hours sent a bolt of fear through the woman. If Phantom's parents weren't there to take care of him when he needed it… If they somehow weren't aware… "Do your parents know that you're Phantom?"

"Are you kidding? They don't even know that I'm a halfa," the teen snorted.

Madeline Fenton resolved then and there that she would take care of this kid.

"Phantom, listen to me-"

"I'll tell them when I'm ready," he snapped.

"Let me finish! My portal turned you into a halfa, didn't it? I'm partially responsible, so I'm going to help you whenever you need it."

Phantom stilled, locking his gaze with the huntress'. Maddie met it unflinchingly, trying with all her might to communicate through that simple look how _responsible_ she felt. The cold spikes twisting through her body throbbed, and Maddie found herself welcoming the pain. She was glad that ectoplasm was rooting itself within her, because Maddie knew that she deserved far worse.

It was her fault that this boy was half ghost.

No wonder Danny had pulled away from her in the past eighteen months – her own invention had imbued one of his classmates with supernatural powers, and he would have been there to witness it.

Phantom's life was ruined, Danny's trust was gone, and it was all Maddie's fault.

She deserved everything that was thrown her way.

Phantom nodded slightly, obviously convinced by something that he saw. "Well if you're gunna help me, there're painkillers in syringes on the top shelf of the fridge," he managed weakly. "Don't give yourself any, though – they only work on ghosts or halfas, and I'm not sure if you count as one yet."

She leaned him against the side of the tub and lurched in the direction of the kitchen.

As she walked, Maddie thought. Pain lanced through her limbs and her chest was numb from the cold that throbbed within, but for this she was glad. No punishment was too harsh for her right now; Maddie had left the lab open on the day the portal started working, and all Danny would admit to was going down there and managing to turn the thing on by fiddling with buttons.

Teenagers sneaking into a restricted lab.

How did Maddie not see that coming?

The huntress sighed as she opened the fridge, grabbing a syringe from the designated shelf and turning back towards the bathroom.

Phantom lifted his head when she returned, immediately holding out his forearm. "The problem with this stuff is that you don't realise that it's wearing off until the pain hits you all at once," he continued as though she had never left.

Maddie injected the teen and he relaxed almost instantly, a smile creeping across his face. "Thanks," Phantom sighed, rubbing the spot where the needle had punctured his skin.

"How long should it take you to heal?" Maddie asked, beginning to gather the supplies that were scattered across the floor. The pain was a welcome distraction – if she focused hard enough on the tiny needles of ice driving their way through her arms and legs, then maybe she could forget what she had inadvertently done to the boy sitting on the bathroom floor.

"If I don't do anything stupid, it should only take about a fortnight with my ghost healing," he responded, snapping shut the lid of the first aid box and standing to place it back on the cabinet shelf.

The woman sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "Did you eat anything?"

He shook his head. "No, I'll go get something from the kitchen and then go to bed. You should think about sleeping as well – you'll heal a lot faster. How're you feeling, anyway?"

Cold. Cold and suddenly scared.

The creeping pain had stopped without her realising, and now her entire body was frozen instead of just her chest.

Maddie wanted to scream and claw this bolt of ectoplasm from her core, but something told her that it was too late now.

"The pain's decreased a bit," she confessed, choosing her words carefully so as not to alarm the weary teen. Whatever was happening to her, it was far too late to stop it now, and Phantom was in no condition to perform any healing acts on her anyway. "I'm not invisible or phasing through things, so don't worry."

The halfa shrugged. "It's my job to worry," he told her firmly. "Now, let's get you to bed.

Maddie allowed herself to be led back to her room, and Phantom gestured to the wardrobe. "Um, there's a suitcase in there that I filled with a bunch of your clothes and stuff when I was getting the pizza, so you can get in pyjamas if you want. You might be a bit more comfortable." His cheeks were flushed green, and Maddie resisted the urge to laugh as the flustered teen bade her a quick "Sleep well" and fled the room.

He really was a sweet kid, and Maddie's resolve to take care of him grew with every new thing he said or did. Providing a safe place for Phantom whenever he needed it was the least she could do, after all.

Opening the wardrobe, Maddie rummaged through the duffel bag Phantom had obviously been talking about and removed a set of pyjamas. She straightened up, flinching at the gentle pulse of ice that shot down her arm.

The fabric fell through her transparent hand, and Maddie stared in horror as it pooled onto the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

Despite the hunger that sent pangs clawing through her abdomen, Maddie couldn't bring herself to eat. Phantom watched over the top of his glass of ectoplasm, intense green eyes silently begging her to swallow just a couple of mouthfuls.

The toast and coffee sat in front of her, normal in every sense of the word.

Plain, human food that Maddie's churning core would not allow her to swallow.

She hadn't slept. Maddie had foregone the pyjamas entirely and curled up in bed with her book, but she hadn't been able to focus on the familiar story. Instead, Maddie spent the night trying not to phase through the bed.

That foreign darkness coiled at the outskirts of her mind, demanding the woman's attention and screaming for her life – she wasn't normal, this wasn't right, she should no longer exist. Every time it reared its head, she made a concerted effort to concentrate on the teenager's own plight, and the darkness recoiled again. After all, Maddie couldn't very well remove herself from existence when Phantom still needed her.

She tried lifting the mug, but it slipped through Maddie's transparent grasp, spilling the hot beverage across the table.

Phantom flinched as though he had been struck, green eyes refusing to meet the huntress'. He took another sip of the glowing liquid, and Maddie watched in fascination as it clung to the edges of his glass with a viscosity similar to that of honey. The smell of toast and coffee was strong in her nostrils, but the ectoplasm's underlying scent threw the woman's mind into overdrive.

The thought of pouring that liquid down her throat was almost too much to bear. Maddie swallowed dryly, feeling a phantom coating of sticky sweetness on her tongue and lips, a craving for something that she had never experienced before. It scared her.

The table seemed to give way beneath her arm gradually, and Maddie jolted as her flesh turned tangible again, stuck half in and half out of the lacquered wood.

Pain hit her all at once, and the woman gave an involuntary scream, trying to tug her limb free. Her efforts were useless – molecules had settled in a way that tangled and intertwined them, effectively making the huntress' arm a part of the table.

Phantom was on his feet in a flash, standing beside Maddie and rubbing her back. Small, gentle words slipped from his lips in a whisper, coaxing the woman to relax her arm and pleading with her to forget that the table was there, "because if it doesn't exist, then there's nothing to stop you from going through it, is there?".

Her mind baulked at this new and frightening way of thinking, but after a couple of minutes filled with pain from her arm and whispers from her shoulder, Maddie managed to view the table as insubstantial long enough for her arm to turn intangible and pull free of the wood.

Phantom continued to rub her back as the woman trembled and cried.

"The first time I got stuck, it was halfway through the floor," he confessed in that same quiet voice. "My hips and legs were sticking out of the kitchen ceiling of my house, and the rest of me was either stuck in wood, carpet and plaster, or sticking out the top of my bedroom floor. I was home alone and nobody was around to help me, so I screamed my head off for a good hour or so before I accidentally turned intangible again and fell the rest of the way through."

In different circumstances, that story would have made her laugh. Now, with the pain fresh in her mind and a nagging dread screaming that there was no ignoring what was happening to her any longer, laughter was the furthest thing from Maddie's thoughts.

"I'm a halfa now, aren't I?" she whispered.

"I honestly don't know," he responded, hands never ceasing in their movements as the teen rubbed at the knots in her shoulder blades. "We can't say for certain until you transform. Until then, I can't give you any ectoplasm either. But the fact that you can't eat human food doesn't look good."

"I thought you could eat human food?" Maddie rasped.

"Not for the first week or so of having ghost powers," Phantom responded. His tone was pleading, as though trying to convince her through something unspoken that everything was going to be okay so long as she stayed calm and trusted him. "It happened to me as well. Your forming core sort of rejects anything you ingest that isn't ghostly."

This new knowledge wasn't unexpected, and as she digested its implications, Maddie's mind drifted back to her own home and how often their food ended up becoming some sort of evil ectoplasmic creation. "Have you let your parents know where you are?" she asked on a whim. "It wouldn't do to make them worried."

Phantom nodded. "Yeah, I dropped by the house and let my Dad know that I was staying at a friend's house when I went to get the pizzas. He always has a lot going on, so he won't start worrying about me for another few days."

Maddie shifted in her seat, gasping at the bursts of freezing energy that tingled along her limbs sporadically. The foreign power made her fidget, and all the woman wanted to do was get up and _run_ until she could no longer move. She was uncomfortable, feeling itchy and suffocated as sparks of spectral energy flowed through her veins along with her blood. It felt like tiny insects crawling beneath her skin, and the huntress couldn't stop the whimper that rose within her chest.

Fingering her wedding ring, Maddie felt fresh tears burn beneath her eyelids. Everything was just so strange, and she honestly didn't know what to do. The woman wasn't used to puzzling over difficult problems alone. Although Jack bumbled along most of the time, concerning himself with failed capture attempts and plates of fudge, he was a good scientist, and the one person in existence that she trusted without question. His fresh perspective was often the thing that Maddie utilised to work out a difficult problem or to test a particularly ludicrous hypothesis, and without him, she felt lost.

Taking a deep breath, Maddie turned to face Phantom. "Could you do something for me?" she whispered.

He looked so _guilty_. "Yeah," the teen sighed. "I'll do anything you ask."

Anything?

The question that she hadn't meant to ask was out before she could stop it. "Who are you?"

His fingers continued to knead her shoulders. "Give me a day or so to prepare," Phantom responded in a dead voice. "I… Just let me do it on my own terms."

Her mind went blank. He was really going to tell her?!

Maddie shook her head slightly. "I-I mean, when you're ready. I won't shoot you or force you to tell your parents or anything. You can trust me."

His mouth quirked at the corners, but Maddie had no idea what could possibly be funny in this situation. "Yeah, thanks. Now is there anything else?"

"How do you know that I wanted to ask something else?" Damn this enquiring mind! Why couldn't Maddie just accept things without having to know all the tiny details?

"I can taste your emotions," Phantom revealed. "It's not reading thoughts or anything, but emotions are a type of energy that ghosts can eat, so…" he raised one shoulder and lowered the other in a half-hearted shrug.

This new information wasn't as exciting as it should have been. Maybe because since he had mentioned it, Maddie could suddenly _taste_ the cloying guilt that radiated off the halfa standing behind her chair. No wonder Phantom had always seemed to know how to react to her – he knew exactly what she was feeling at any given moment.

So _that_ was how ghosts knew exactly how to scare their targets… There was research potential there, but Maddie was suddenly exhausted. Exhausted and lost.

Fiddling with the simple gold band, Maddie spun her wedding ring around her finger.

She needed Jack.

"Could you please bring my husband here?"

Phantom stiffened. "He'll try to kill me," the boy argued. "When I went to get the pizza last night, I managed to catch the news – thanks to the bank's security cameras, everyone's blaming me for kidnapping you, which I guess I kind of did, but Jack's running around town armed to the teeth and screaming that he's going to destroy me. I've never seen him this angry."

She should have expected that. Sighing, Maddie pulled off her diamond engagement ring. "Let me write a note to him," she said. "Give it to him with this ring, and Jack will know that I'm not dead, and it's not a trick. It's something we set up years ago."

Phantom tilted his head. "Well, any old ghost could send your ring to him and force you to write a note."

"We decided on a code as well," Maddie explained. "If I don't write some specific words in the letter, then it's not safe and a rescue mission is most likely in order."

The teen sighed, finally dropping his hands from her shoulders. "I'll go get you a pen and paper," he announced, "so long as you think you can hold the pen."

Maddie sent him a small smile, somewhat bewildered that he had agreed so readily but forcing herself not to question it. "I think I'll be able to manage," she shot back. "After all, it looks like I've got a pretty good coach."

Phantom responded with a smile of his own before slipping out of the room.


	7. Chapter 7

Phantom kicked open the front door and dropped a rather green-faced Jack on the carpet. "You are _so_ lucky that we're only a few minutes from the Fenton Portal," the teen grumbled as he leaned against the wall. He rubbed against his chest with a grimace, using the other hand to dab at a split lip.

Maddie got to her feet stiffly, leaving her book on the couch and lurching towards the two boys. "Phantom, are you hurt badly?" she demanded, observing the black eye and swollen jaw with a frown. Dark green bruises were already spreading beneath skin as pale as moonlight, mottling patches of the teen's face where he had been hit the hardest.

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry," the halfa insisted, ducking away from her before she could touch him. "He only punched me a couple of times before I managed to hand him the ring and note, and he didn't use ectoguns or anything. You and Jack talk – I'm gunna go get some ectoplasm and lie down for a bit."

He limped off, obviously hurt more than he was letting on, and Maddie felt the increasingly familiar guilt sour her thoughts. She had sent him into a potentially dangerous situation, without even considering what might go wrong. The teen had obviously had reservations about going, but she had pushed, and he had paid for it.

Once again, this strange young halfa was hurt because of her.

Strong arms snaked around the woman's waist, lifting Maddie off the floor and holding her tightly. "Mads," Jack sobbed, burying his face in her hair. "I thought you were… I-I…"

"Shhh," the huntress soothed. She returned the hug, rubbing circles into her wonderful husband's spine. "It's alright, I'm here, it's going to be okay…"

Maddie's fears began to melt away. Jack was here now, and so long as she had him on her side, she could conquer the world. This whole halfa business, with its strange secrets and unpredictable powers, could be worked through. She'd be okay. And once Maddie was alright, they could work together to figure out a way to help Phantom.

In between sobs, Jack plastered her face with kisses.

After what Maddie deemed an appropriate amount of time, she extricated herself from Jack's arms. "You're squashing me," she announced in a deliberately light-hearted voice. A door slammed, and the woman winced. "You hurt him, didn't you?"

Jack stared at her. "Of course I did! The spook just appeared next to me in the kitchen and started babbling about a note or something. If there's one thing I know not to trust more than anything else, it's a ghost acting different from normal!"

"Well, Phantom's _not_ normal," Maddie murmured absently as she glanced down the hallway. The door to Phantom's room was shut, and some textbooks had fallen across the floorboards from where they had been stacked neatly next to the doorframe.

"I guess I _did_ hit him a little hard," the man sighed. "A couple of punches and a kick to the shin and he was on the floor, almost out for the count. That's when I realised that he had your ring. The note said you needed to explain something before you came home?"

Maddie sighed, refocusing her attention on her best friend. Everything that she had planned on saying was suddenly gone, and the woman watched in fascination as Jack carefully slid the ring back onto her finger. His hair and clothing were unkempt, face lined with worry and exhaustion.

She decided to start with something simple. "Let's sit down." That was good – nice and normal, with nothing to indicate that she was ready to scream or cry or possibly even bolt out of the room in order to avoid the changes that this conversation would irrevocably catalyse.

Jack's fingers slipped into the gaps between hers, and Maddie squeezed his hand as they sat on the couch. It was a nice couch, made of soft leather and dark grey in colour. It was almost as soft as the bed that Maddie had been sleeping in, and she found herself trailing the fingers of her free hand lazily over the cool surface.

"You're freezing," Jack commented, clasping his other hand over their intertwined ones in an attempt to warm her unnaturally cold digits. Maddie tensed. She couldn't acknowledge that, because then one thing would lead to another, and she'd blurt out the whole story without any coherence. A small part of her mind screamed for her to _get a grip,_ and Maddie took a deep breath.

She had to start from the beginning, or everything would become a jumbled mess. Pulling her hand free, the woman undid the buttons on the front of her pyjama top. Jack's smile faltered at the unexpected movement, his confusion giving way to an entirely different expression as the fabric fell away.

The bolt of green, the veins of ectoplasm, the inflammation – all of it had faded significantly, but this was somehow even more gruesome than the wound's original appearance. Before, she could fool herself into thinking that there was still time, that the icy cold _thing_ that had saved her life could be pulled out or dissipated once she had healed sufficiently.

Now the green was an integral part of her flesh, and one glance for someone as familiar with ectoplasm as Jack Fenton was more than enough to know this.

"Mads," he breathed, face slack with horror, "what _happened?_ "

She took a shuddering breath, and told him.

Jack didn't interrupt her narrative, simply sitting there and growing paler with every new piece of information. Everything she spoke about, from thieves shooting her through the heart, to halfas being real, to ectoplasm tainting her body, to Phantom being their mistake in the first place, exacted a visible toll on the man. It took a surprisingly short few minutes for her to explain exactly what was going on, and by the time Maddie had finished, her poor husband was grey-faced and trembling as though he had seen… well, something horrific that he didn't study and hunt on a daily basis.

She stopped talking, and he didn't start. Maddie knew the man well enough to know that this quiet moment would be necessary – the little inconsistencies throughout their dealings with Phantom, all of the things that had often kept the Fentons awake for several nights in a row while research continued to hit dead ends, were explained in one brutal hit. To top it all off, everything he had been comfortable with at home was suddenly thrown into question with the revelation that his own wife had been turned into one of these hybrids. When presented with information of this magnitude, Jack Fenton was the kind of man that had to stop and think for a minute in order for it all to make sense.

They sat in silence for a long time, fingers intertwined and breaths in perfect synchronisation.

Once his trembling had died down somewhat, Jack swallowed thickly. "Can you show me?" he breathed into the tense atmosphere.

How badly Maddie wished that she could refuse. So long as she didn't actually exhibit spectral abilities, her halfa status was still just theory. As soon as she showed him, there was no more denying it, no more pretending that things weren't set in stone.

Holding up her hand, Maddie imagined that it was the only corporeal thing in the universe, and plunged it into the lovely leather couch.


	8. Chapter 8

Standing outside the door, Jack sighed and pressed his forehead against its smooth surface. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing, on the feel of the door against his skin and the familiar hazmat that covered the majority of his body. Plain, normal things that would not change no matter who was half ghost or how they became infused with ectoplasm.

Pipes in the wall groaned, and water started running in the room next door.

Showers were normal, as well. Ghosts didn't take showers – they simply phased off whatever grime they managed to pick up. Maddie was taking a shower, and this fact alone contributed greatly to keeping the man calm right now. So long as she still acted like a human, Jack wouldn't have lost his wife. Hybrid she may be, but she was still his Maddie. They had worked through problems in the past, and they would work through this one as well.

As much as he wished to dwell on it right now, Maddie's condition wasn't the main priority.

Jack knocked on the door, and was rewarded by a startled "Just a second!" Before Jack could wonder what the boy could possibly need a moment to do, the cracks in the doorframe were illuminated by a flash of light.

"Okay, come in."

Jack twisted the handle, pushing the door open just enough for him to slip inside.

They were in a tiny laundry. Squashed in the floor space between the washing machine, the dryer, and the wall, was a nest of blankets and cushions. Phantom was folded into this pile, comic books strewn about near his feet and a half-empty bottle of ectoplasm sitting beside him.

The halfa stiffened. "Mr Fenton-"

"Call me Jack. What on _earth_ are you doing?" Jack demanded, sinking into a crouch at the edge of the blanket nest.

Phantom shrugged. "It's more private than the living room," he muttered, cheeks flushing green.

He looked exhausted, and the bruises had now bloomed across a good half of the kid's face. Jack felt horrible just looking at them. "Did I hurt you badly?" he blurted, immediately berating himself for changing the topic.

"Not really," the halfa mused. "I get hurt worse in a lot of ghost fights."

"I don't see you covered in bruises," Jack countered.

"I heal fast."

When the hunter didn't respond, Phantom furrowed his brow. "Is there anything you need?"

Jack stared at the teenager that he had unwittingly turned into some sort of spectral half breed. "I'm the one who should be asking you that," he whispered. "Mads told me everything, and… Phantom, I'm _so_ sorry."

"Hey, you only punched me a bit, I'm fine!" The kid gave a shaky laugh, but the movement obviously hurt. Phantom's smile morphed into a grimace as he reached up to massage his chest, arms unfolding from where they had been tucked against his sides like some origami trick.

Jack swallowed thickly. "Mads told me what our portal did to you," he said. Meeting Phantom's eyes, the hunter put as much remorse as he could into his next words. "I'm really, really sorry, Phantom.

The teen's mouth twisted into a sad smile. "Yeah, you're not to blame. I'd say that I'm sorry for going down there and getting turned into a halfa, but I'm really not."

Well, this was an interesting development. "You mean-?"

"Yeah!" Phantom nodded enthusiastically. "I used to think that I'd give anything to be human again, but a while ago I realised that I wouldn't give up my ghost half for anything. I use my powers to help a lot of people, and they're such a big part of me that I can't even remember what it feels like to be human anymore."

Letting out a deep breath, Jack felt himself grow significantly calmer. If Phantom's life wasn't ruined by Jack's carelessness, then there was really no reason to beat himself up over it.

Furrowing his brow, Jack decided that since _that_ was settled, it was time to move onto the next topic. Reaching up, he switched on the clothes dryer.

Phantom stared at the hunter as though he had lost his mind. "Okay, I'm used to you doing strange things, but why'd you just do that? There's not even anything in it!"

Jack pushed aside the unsettling thought that Phantom was obviously very familiar with his erratic behaviour. To think that the halfa was in and out of the hunter's life was a disconcerting thought, threatening to rock Jack's world if he focused too much on its implications.

"I don't want Mads to hear us," he confessed, trying to ignore the small voice screaming in his mind that Jack encountered this kid's human persona frequently.

Phantom tilted his head, something about his expression, diction, and mannerisms maddeningly familiar in a way that the hunter couldn't pinpoint. "What's there to overhear?"

Jack leaned forwards until he was practically in the teenager's lap. "Mads is a halfa now, isn't she?"

The boy sagged, suddenly looking incredibly weary. "Yeah," he croaked, eyes glistening. "I'm really, _really_ sorry, Jack, but I… I _had_ to save her! I couldn't let her die!" Phantom wailed, a tear spilling over the rim of his eyelid and tracing a track down his bruised cheek. He seemed to be pleading for justification for some heinous crime, as though if Jack could just _understand_ , then everything would work itself out.

"Shhh," Jack soothed, using a thumb to gently wipe away the boy's tear. "I know, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you for saving my wife," he said, making the overused phrases sound as sincere as possible.

Phantom sniffed, swiping the back of his hand over his eyes. "You're not mad at me?"

"Never," Jack whispered, sliding backwards a bit to give the boy some space, "but I need to know if being a halfa will affect Mads in any major way."

Phantom winced. "Um, about that…" He shifted uneasily, a hand automatically moving to massage his chest again.

"What is it?" Jack pressed. The teen's hesitation terrified him, and thoughts of every possible problem with powerful obsessions sprang to the forefront of the man's mind.

"When her powers are fully stable, in about ten years, she'll become immortal."

"What…?" the hunter breathed, feeling the colour drain from his face. "Yeah," Phantom sighed, dropping his gaze to the blanket draped over his lap, "she'll stop aging."

Jack's chest constricted painfully, his eyes filling with tears immediately at the thought of what both he and Maddie would have to go through so long as he remained mortal. "I thought it'd be something like that," the man whispered in a voice that shook.

Phantom nodded miserably, keeping his eyes steadily on the blanket as gloved fingers kneaded his chest. He grimaced, and Jack jumped as a ring of light burst into existence around Phantom's waist.

The halfa's pained expression morphed to one of terror, and he doubled over with a gasp. The ring shuddered for several moments, briefly splitting into two before flickering out.

The room was silent except for Phantom's heavy breathing and the whirring of the clothes dryer.

"What was that?" Jack demanded once his brain calmed down enough to form coherent thoughts.

"'M tired," Phantom groaned. "I'll have to turn human again soon."

"The light turns you human?"

"More or less," the teen muttered, slumping back against the cushions.

Wow. Jack found himself grinning at this new revelation. Phantom didn't blame him, and now that he thought about it, the man realised something amazing: he, Jack Fenton, had managed to create a real live superhero! This kid was the perfect ghost hunting weapon, he had epic powers, and he was a super nice guy to boot. The thought filled him with childish glee, but the hunter did his best to suppress his excitement – it wouldn't do to scare the teen. "That's so cool," Jack announced, attempting nonchalance. "No wonder you decided to be a superhero – you've already got the outfit, the powers, _and_ the awesome transformation sequence!"

Phantom chuckled weakly. "Of course you'd see it that way," he wheezed, both hands now pressing hard against his chest.

"Do you need some painkillers?" Jack asked, that small display of pain bringing his thoughts back down to a more practical level. Maddie would be proud.

The boy shook his head. "Nah, I'm off those super strong ones now – I can't take more of the lower-strength ones until dinner. I'll live." Phantom's mouth quirked as though he had just told a joke, and Jack supposed that in some morbid fashion he had.

Back to the real reason that Jack was there.

"Phantom, I have a big favour to ask of you. Don't do it until you're healed, though."

The halfa frowned. "What is it? I'll help you if I can."

Jack fisted his fingers in the blanket, locking eyes with this bizarre teenager. "Turn me into a halfa."

Phantom swallowed visibly, gaze as steadfast as the hunter's. They sat still for several moments, and although he wanted to fidget, Jack held as still as he could; it was as though moving would cause him to fail some sort of test. A muscle in Phantom's jaw worked as he chewed on the inside of his lip. "If that's what you really want," the halfa conceded after what felt like an age of deliberation. "I have no right to keep you mortal when Maddie's not."

Jack felt like he was going to explode from gratitude. He wasn't going to be kept apart from his soul mate! Jack could scream the news to the entire world and it still wouldn't convey the depth of his joy. "Thank you!" the hunter cried, throwing his arms around the boy's shoulders.

Phantom yelped, and Jack pulled back as quickly as he could, apologising profusely.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," the kid groaned, waving a hand dismissively. "Now, since you turned on the dryer, I'm guessing that Maddie doesn't know about this? I suggest you go tell her now – secrets can get real big real fast, and all of a sudden you have no clue how you could possibly tell anyone."

Jack guessed that Phantom knew from experience, but decided not to push the matter. "Your secret's safe whenever you want to tell us," he promised before flicking off the dryer and getting to his feet.

Phantom nodded. "Thanks, I really appreciate that."

The shower turned off, and Jack sent the halfa a sheepish grin before heading to the door.

The doorway was scattered with the textbooks that Phantom had knocked over earlier. Kneeling across the doorjamb, the hunter gathered the thick and somewhat familiar volumes into his arms, staking them neatly back into place.

Light illuminated the room behind him, followed by a groan that lacked the unnatural echo that accompanied any noise Phantom made.

Taking a deep breath, Jack screwed his eyes shut and got to his feet, feeling behind him for the doorhandle. He grasped the knob pulled it closed blindly, not trusting himself to open his eyes again until the door clicked shut.

Letting out the breath that he had been holding, Jack mentally congratulated himself for resisting the burning urge to watch the kid turn from something dead to something that was miraculously _alive_. Until Phantom was ready to tell him, the hunter would respect his privacy.

Despite this new resolution, the closed door was far too tempting.

Whistling jovially, the hunter ambled down the hallway before he could succumb to curiosity, wondering if Phantom had any fudge in the fridge.

To his utter delight, there was an entire platter of his favourite chocolate fudge, complete with almonds and a can of whipped cream.


	9. Chapter 9

Maddie was downright livid.

Jack sagged in his seat, picking half-heartedly at the remnants of the once-glorious platter of fudge. He watched as Maddie paced circles around the other side of the table, working herself up into a right state. Despite the pain that throbbed through her body, the woman shouted for all she was worth, gesticulating wildly and occasionally jabbing a finger in her husband's direction.

"I didn't bring you here so you could decide to go through the same thing as me!" she exclaimed, swatting at burning eyes with frustrated movements. How dare he? They had a duty to their family, but that obviously meant _nothing_ to the man sitting across the table.

Jack sagged further, sliding down so that his chin was almost level with the platter. "I'm sorry," he whined, acting in similitude of a dejected puppy, "but when Phantom said you're now immortal…"

"Did you even _think_ about Danny and Jazz?" the woman snapped, slamming her palms down on the table as a few rebellious tears slipped free. "What's it going to do to _them?!_ "

"We don't have to tell them," Jack responded in a voice that was so quiet it sounded like it would break if startled. "Jazz'll graduate in a few months, Danny in two years, and they'll have both moved out in the few years after. We don't have to explain or even tell them, Mads. They won't be around to be affected."

"Like hell they won't! We have a family, and they'll still be in our lives and us in theirs after they've moved out!" Maddie screamed, tearing her hands through her hair. She stiffened, her body suddenly seeming to forget what gravity was.

The woman rose through the air, ending up with her back pressed against the ceiling. Panic seized her for a moment, and some part of Maddie was absolutely terrified because _flying was definitely more than she could handle right now,_ but then the panic and pain and fear all contributed to her fury like gasoline on a fire.

Pressing her palms uselessly against the ceiling, Maddie continued to shout as though floating uncontrollably was the most normal thing in the world. "All you care about is yourself, not giving a damn about how badly this could affect our kids! I can't believe you're being so selfish!" The pain was increasing, and Maddie hiccupped through her tears as her breathing caught and stopped.

Light was suddenly everywhere as Maddie's chest constricted painfully, cold exploding through her limbs. The woman clutched at her middle, moaning. "Damn it," she hissed, tilting her head forwards so that blue bangs hid her face.

She was a ghost.

This sudden and unnatural transition from living to dead blew all thoughts from the huntress' mind, and she curled her arms around her midriff, grasping heaving sides tightly as though trying to hold herself together.

This was impossible.

Gasping for breath as though she had just sprinted halfway across town. A heartbeat that throbbed in her ears. _Pain._

She was a monster.

Maddie pushed those thoughts away, sending them back to where they lurked at the edges of her mind. She was still Maddie Fenton, loving mother and wife. Phantom was still just a teenager full of good intentions and bad puns. The two of them might not be human, but one thing was certain: they were _not_ monsters.

"I'm sorry," Jack whispered again, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. "I'm a coward, but at least I can admit that I'm not strong."

"What?" the woman demanded, staring through tears and the strands of electric blue hair that clung to wet cheeks.

Sitting up a little straighter, Jack swallowed thickly as he traced patterns in the cream and fudge debris. "I'm a good inventor, but a horrible hunter," he announced in a voice that trembled. "I'm bad at hunting because I'm always so scared that I'll never come back home, and if I died then I'd leave you."

Taking a deep breath, the hunter's voice hitched and his own tears broke free. "That's why I always follow you, even that time when you went to help your sister celebrate her divorce and you obviously didn't want me to come. Whether I'm a ghost or a human, I love you so much that you'll always be my obsession, and if you're now immortal…" Sniffing, the man wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I love you too much to ever leave you, and I thought you loved me enough to never let me go."

His words hit her like a punch to the jaw, ears ringing and thoughts scattered. It took a moment to collect herself, and that hit had been enough to snap the woman back into perspective.

She was being stupid.

Their children were important, but Maddie remembered the day her parents had sat down with their two teenage daughters to have a long and serious talk.

The girls' brother was in jail, and nothing had looked like it would be okay ever again.

_There's one thing you two need to know,_ their parents had told them.

_Children go astray sometimes, so badly that you can't get them back. A lot of families fall apart because of this, but ours won't. We're strong._

_I'll tell you why._

_Because your mother and I treat our love for each other as the most important thing in the world. And if you girls ever fall in love, make sure that it's a love like that, or don't bother keeping the bloke around because, likely as not, he won't be there to support you when you most need it. Family is important, but in the end, when your kids are all grown up and are having their own glorious lives, the person you'll still have around should be the most important person to you ever. Never forget that._

Only now, with Jack wholly prepared to give up everything that he _was_ , did Maddie understand.

"I love you, too," she responded, feeling so damned _guilty_ all of a sudden. "Sorry for yelling." Her fingers curling tighter into the blue-turned-scarlet hazmat, Maddie felt all her anger drain away. Suddenly exhausted, the woman clutched her sides and shivered on the ceiling. "Jack," she whimpered, "get me down, please."

The man gulped, lurching to his feet. "Um, I don't… Just hold tight, I'll go get Phantom."

"Hurry," Maddie sobbed as he sprinted from the room. She felt washed-out and exhausted, realising that this was the first time they had fought over something in such a heated manner since that anniversary debacle a couple of years back.

It was petty, pathetic, and unnecessary. They knew each other like nobody else, and they both knew better than that. She had to be strong now – no more fighting over silly things, no more taking Jack for granted.

Their family was already falling apart anyway; Danny drifted further away every month, closing himself off and often leaving the house for days on end. As much as the woman tried, he was slipping through her grasp.

She would still hold onto her children for as long as they let her, but the person that she would never let go of was Jack. Finally realising this, Maddie felt herself settle into a much calmer state of mind.

Phantom sidled into the room, dull green eyes meeting hers as he sighed. "Oh, _Maddie._ "

He looked so sad, gaze raking over her new form repeatedly. It was almost as if the kid looked enough times, what he was seeing might magically prove itself to be nothing but a dream.

Maddie could definitely relate. For a moment she wished that she had a mirror, but the thought of what she might see made her glad that she didn't.

Jack filled the doorway behind him, clasping the teen's shoulder. "Can you get her down?"

Phantom raised and lowered his free shoulder. "I can try," he admitted weakly, brushing off Jack's hand and trudging around the table to stand near where Maddie floated.

The teen practically collapsed into a chair. "Forgive me if I don't join you up there," he groaned. "Now, flying's like intangibility, or any of your other powers – it's psychological, so-"

"Why are you still so tired?" Maddie interrupted, wiping at the tears that still lingered on her cheeks. "I'm not anywhere near that bad."

The boy sent her a look that Maddie supposed was meant to convey irritation, but only made him appear more exhausted. "It takes a lot of energy to stay in ghost form all the time," he grumbled.

"Not to mention that it can't be comfortable sleeping on the laundry floor," Jack chimed in.

Phantom glared, and Maddie swallowed, staring at the teen in horror. "You _what?_ "

"It's private in there," Phantom ground through gritted teeth, "and this place has only one bed."

"Phantom," the woman growled, "as soon as I get down from this ceiling you are going to bed and getting a good night's sleep in your human form."

He raised a bruised eyebrow, and Maddie felt a sudden jolt of unsettling familiarity.

For a moment she could have sworn that it was Danny standing there.

Maddie blinked, and the moment was gone. He was Phantom again, a whole lot of insufferable attitude bundled up in hazmat and a quick tongue. She steeled herself, preparing for the backchat and argument that would most likely be on its way.

Phantom chuckled before curling in on himself with a grimace. "Well, we have to get you down first," he responded, somewhat surprising the huntress by his lack of objection. White light flickered at his waist for a moment, and Maddie could have sworn that he let loose a sob before the brightness disappeared again.

After her own transformation, she knew what that light meant.

"Alright," the woman sighed. "Tell me how to get down, please."

Jack had moved to stand beneath his wife, stretching his arms out comically. "I'll catch you!" he promised. Maddie smiled fondly at her soul mate before concentrating on what the younger halfa was telling her about remembering and forgetting gravity.

It was easier than intangibility. Maybe because she was in ghost form this time, or possibly due to the fact that the scientist had already had to alter her way of thinking in order to control her body's tangible state. The ease was most likely a combination of both of those factors, along with a calmer mind and an environment that felt a lot more familiar.

Whatever the reason, it only took a few moments for Maddie to drop into her grinning husband's arms.

Phantom's rings flickered into existence again for a handful of heartbeats.

"You'll turn human when you get tired," the boy groaned, levering himself into a standing position as Jack set Maddie on her own feet. "If you want to change back earlier, um, you have to sort of just _change…_ Reach for that warm spark inside you … Ugh, I can't explain it. You sort of can't do it until you've experienced it, so just wait for your body to change back on its own." He had lurched to the door as he spoke, leaning heavily against the frame.

"Go get in the bed," Maddie ordered. "I'm going in the laundry to get whatever bedding you've got in there, so the only way to keep your secret is to sleep in the bed."

Phantom took one look at her face before obviously realising that the woman was serious. Slumping his shoulders, the boy staggered across the hallway, disappearing through the bedroom door.

Light shone beneath it, followed by a groan and the creaking of bedsprings.

"If only Danny were so obedient," Maddie sighed.

Jack slung an arm around her waist, planting a kiss against the top of his wife's head as he hugged her from behind. "We can only hope," he whispered. "Now, what're we going to do with the stuff in the laundry?"


	10. Chapter 10

Jack crowed in triumph, throwing his hands up in the air. "You did it!"

Sitting upside-down on the ceiling, Maddie smiled as she pushed the final thumb tack into the plaster. She let go of the blanket's edge, allowing it to hang from where it was pinned. It was the final 'wall' to hang around the couch, effectively shielding it from the view of anyone who entered the room. A little more elaborate than the pillow forts she had built with her kids, but with what Maddie knew of Phantom's stubborn nature, he would have returned to the laundry floor when he woke up. At least this way, the kid would have somewhere a bit more comfortable to rest.

"Is everything secure?" Jack swept the fabric aside, testing if it could handle the strain of someone passing through this makeshift tent of curtains.

"Yeah." Maddie frowned as her stomach clenched. "I think I should get down now – I'm feeling a little shaky," she confessed, sinking to land on the floor.

Jack clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you look a little sick there. Were you flying for too long?"

The woman shook her head, leaning into her husband gratefully. Exhaustion hit her in a sudden wave, sending white rings washing over her body and returning the woman to her human form. "I haven't eaten anything since that pizza," she said, ignoring the transformation – if she treated it like something perfectly normal, it could be dealt with later. "I'm really hungry."

"To the kitchen!" Jack bellowed, pointing with a flourish. "You get comfortable, and I'll whip up a storm!"

Maddie smiled fondly as he disappeared through the dining room door with all the grace of a charging rhinoceros.

"You know that you can't eat what he makes you," a small voice rasped from beside her.

To her credit, Maddie didn't jump at the halfa's sudden appearance. "You only went to bed a couple of hours ago," she scolded, turning to face the teen. "Do I have to drag you back there?"

Phantom ducked his head. "It's sort of hard to sleep with Jack being so noisy," he countered, "and I need some ectoplasm."

His voice was still uncharacteristically quiet. Limbs shook slightly as the boy hugged himself, gloved fingers digging into his sides. His face was pinched with pain and fatigue, but at least the bruises had already faded away thanks to the halfa's fast healing. Maddie gently placed an arm around his shoulders. "I'm guessing that I need some of that as well," she responded. "I'm really hungry."

Phantom allowed himself to be guided through the dining room door. "Yeah. If you can keep that down, you're good to eat normal food in a couple of hours."

Maddie deposited the boy in a seat, continuing towards the double doors reminiscent of a restaurant. "The stuff in the bottles in the fridge?" At his nod, she pushed the kitchen doors open, quirking a smile at the sight of Jack covered in flour.

"It's not ready yet!" the man screeched, hunching protectively over an assortment of ingredients that he had spread over the massive bench.

"I'm just getting some ectoplasm," Maddie reassured him as she headed for the fridge. It would take Jack a couple of hours to manage to create anything edible anyway, so there was really no reason to let him know that she wasn't allowed to eat just yet.

Grabbing a bottle that was already open and a couple of glasses from the draining rack beside the sink, the huntress returned to her saviour. Phantom seemed to brighten when he saw her, and for a moment, Maddie envisioned the kid sitting at her dining table back in Amity Park.

The thought wasn't as ludicrous as it would have seemed a week ago.

The teen accepted his cup eagerly, downing its glowing contents in one go and pouring himself another serving instantly.

"You seem to be holding your form better now," Maddie remarked.

"Well, I didn't sleep, but I rested enough to gather a little energy."

Maddie nodded – that made sense. This new piece of information landed in the jumble of other things that she had learned from the child in front of her, shoved to the corner of her mind for investigation at a later date.

She had all the time in the world, after all.

The ectoplasm in her own glass glowed as green as the ghost kid's eyes, and the woman swallowed dryly. Revulsion sent a shudder down her spine, and as Maddie stared at her beverage, she was far more inclined to fling it across the room than drink it.

"Small sips are best to start."

Maddie wasn't sure when Phantom had moved to stand beside her, but she was glad as his hand closed around her wrist. The glass was guided to her lips, and a gloved hand supported it as its rim pressed against the crease of her mouth.

"Come on," he coaxed, tilting the cup so that its contents barely graced her mouth before pulling away again. "Just a little taste, and I promise that it won't be nearly as bad as you think it is."

Her lips were covered in a layer of freezing slime. It made Maddie want to scrub her mouth with a pumice stone until any cell that had come into contact with this horrid stuff was removed from her body.

She had to calm down. Taking a deep breath through her nose, Maddie reminded herself that she was now biologically _made_ of this stuff to the point where it gave her ghost powers. She was weak, starving, and growing a little dizzy. This was really no time for squeamishness.

Before she could stop herself, Maddie licked the ectoplasm off her lips.

It was electric. Like putting a battery to your tongue, but far better to taste.

Phantom smiled shakily, guiding Maddie to lift the glass to her mouth again. "See?" he asked in a voice that quavered. "It's really not that bad. I've got these filter things that collect ectoplasm from the Ghost Zone's atmosphere, so it's pure and clean. And it really doesn't taste that bad, sort of like lemons but sweet or something? I dunno, I usually mix it with juice or some type of soda. There's this one guy, that evil halfa I told you about, who likes to mix his ectoplasm with wine and drink it with dinner."

A small, detached part of Maddie's mind noted that he rambled whenever he got emotional. That thought was also filed away for later – right now, all Maddie could focus on was the glorious fluid that slid down her throat with a viscosity somewhere between honey and ice-cream.

It was heavenly.

Phantom continued to control her wrist, never allowing Maddie to take more than a sip at a time. "You can drink as much as you want later," he promised. "I just have to make sure that you're okay with this, though I think a ghost form is pretty good indication that you'll be fine. Still, I threw up whatever I ate for the first couple of days being a halfa. I couldn't even drink water, and eventually I got so hungry that when I ended up in the lab and saw the ectoplasm filling up the portal's filter, I ate all of it in one go, complete with all its contaminants. It helped with the hunger, but the contamination made my new powers go all wonky."

With the glass empty, Maddie slid into a seat. She ran her finger around the rim, collecting the remaining fluid and sucking it off delightedly. "That was amazing," she admitted, more to herself than the teenager.

Phantom nodded in agreement, pouring himself a third glass and nursing it between cupped hands. "This stuff is the only reason I've been strong enough to beat some of the really powerful ghosts," he confessed. "I try to keep at least one bottle near me all the time, and I phase soft drinks out of their cans and put this in instead to try to hide what I'm actually drinking. My friends carry cans for me as well, which is great because I'm nearly always with them. We have to be really careful though, because once this guy stole a can, and he got ectoplasm poisoning and even though it was really funny it wasn't, y'know?"

"You're rambling," Maddie interrupted, drawing her finger across the glass again to collect any residue that she might have missed the first time.

She remembered that. Dash Baxter, the school's top athlete and Maddie's main suspect for the bruises that covered her son, had mysteriously collapsed several months ago shortly after lunch. By the time he got to the hospital he was glowing a sickly yellow, and it had taken all of the Fentons' extraction equipment and a lot of blood blossom syrup to cure the thick-headed boy.

Ectoplasm poisoning, but until now, nobody had any clue how the kid had managed to ingest an almost lethal dose.

Running her tongue over the back of her teeth, Maddie wondered how stupid he had to be to drink something that glowed unnaturally. Honestly, it even _tasted_ dangerous!

Phantom shifted on his feet. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Maddie blinked, recalling her comment. "Not at all. It's… It's nice to talk to you without looking down the barrel of a gun."

The teen swallowed, casting his eyes to the floor. "Yeah," he choked, sidling towards the door. "It's really… nice."

He bolted out of the room, and Maddie found herself smiling. Sure, the kid was sometimes a little strange, but years of having ghost powers and being hunted down by humans and ghosts alike would do that to just about anyone. Before Jack had accidentally blown it up several years ago, the cat they had adopted from the shelter had acted in much the same manner.

The bottle sat in the table, still one-third full of ectoplasm. It glimmered invitingly, and the woman swallowed before curling her fingers into fists and getting to her own feet.

Phantom had said to wait, so wait she would.

Padding to the living room in search of her abandoned book, Maddie smiled at the soft, human breathing emanating from within the blanket fort. "Good night, Phantom," she whispered, tucking the book under arm and flicking off the light.

His sleepy murmur morphed into a contented sigh as the woman pulled the door shut behind her, minimising as much of Jack's noise as possible. Just before the door clicked closed, a quiet good night in a very familiar voice wafted from the darkness.

Her mind was obviously playing tricks on her, so Maddie pretended not to hear.


	11. Chapter 11

The Ghost Zone didn't seem nearly as foreboding as it had a few days ago. In fact, Maddie almost felt _comfortable_ as she followed Phantom through the alien atmosphere.

Flying felt good as well, and Maddie took the opportunity to see how well she could manoeuver in open air. With every sharp turn and successful acceleration, her good mood was bolstered. It all just felt so _natural…_

In contrast, Jack's face had turned alarmingly pale as soon as they had taken off. His arms were clamped tightly around Phantom's throat, with the younger halfa wincing and repositioning the hunter's grasp every few minutes. Maddie would have carried him herself, if not for the fact that she still occasionally turned intangible without warning.

Phantom assured her that these little slip ups were a natural part of adjusting to a ghostly core, and had regaled the couple with stories of social embarrassment and an assortment of dropped beakers in chemistry. He had even spoken in ghost a little bit, testing how quickly Maddie's development was progressing. She could understand words on their own or short sentences when spoken very slowly, and the teen reassured her that it would be a little while before her powers were strong enough for her to speak the language of the dead fluently.

Jack was the odd one out. Despite acting as though greatly interested, Maddie conceded internally that he was still upset about the entire situation. He only listened half-heartedly, and information that would have once had the man jumping in glee had barely elicited a response.

The only way to fix this was to give him what he wanted.

Sooner or later, Jack had to become a halfa, and Maddie wasn't entirely certain how she felt about that. The more she thought about, the greater a curse immortality seemed to be. She had tried to broach the topic with Phantom, but whenever their eternal lifespan was mentioned, the kid withdrew. It had immediately been obvious that he had not come to terms with the situation himself, so the woman had chosen not to press that matter until he seemed a little more comfortable.

The portal was closed when they reached it.

Phantom deposited Jack on a floating chunk of stone, fumbling with a mobile phone that he produced from the pockets of his black suit. The phone itself was nondescript – a Nokia brick, sturdy and with no features to distinguish it from others of its type.

The perfect choice for a superhero trying to avoid identification.

"Hi, Jazz, it's Phantom."

A shrill sound filtered through the receiver, and Maddie found herself smiling as the teen winced. "Yeah, I told you that yesterday! Your parents are trying to get back into the human world, so could you come and open the portal, please? …Thank you."

"Why don't you just make a portal home?" Jack grunted as the halfa hung up and pocketed the phone.

"I don't like to do it a lot," Phantom admitted. "It uses heaps of energy, and I usually have to turn human afterwards. It'll take me a few more months of training to do it in battle, if my wail's anything to go by."

"How do you know Jazz?" Maddie queried, sidling closer to the hovering teen.

She had her suspicions, but there was no use jumping to conclusions. Evidence was required.

"I thought we already established that we go to school together," Phantom said slowly, sending the woman a sidelong glance. "I'm pretty close to Danny, and Jazz is really protective of Danny and anyone who's his friend. She made all of us put her number in our phones, and we're supposed to call if we ever need help."

At Maddie's murderous glare he held up both hands. "I swear that I don't get her involved in anything dangerous!"

"Does she know who you are?" Jack queried.

Phantom met his gaze unflinchingly. "That's solely between Jazz and me," he responded. "The same goes for anyone else. Whether somebody knows my secret or not is between me and them, along with anyone else whom I decide to tell."

"So she knows?" the hunter demanded.

The teen's brow furrowed. "Whether she knows or not currently-"

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Maddie shouted. "If you have any relationship with my children, I have a right to know, since it could put them in danger!"

He had hesitated just then when saying the children's names, as though checking himself before he spoke. Coupled with the way he moved his head and hands, the way he carried himself, those small inflections in tone and accent… Maddie couldn't be entirely certain, but this kid sure _acted_ a lot like her son.

Phantom sagged.

"Yeah," he sighed, "both Jazz and Danny know."

Maddie rubbed at her eyes. If her suspicions turned out to be incorrect, she knew that she should object – a relationship with Phantom would make her children prime targets for ghosts that hunted the halfa – but she couldn't bring herself to say anything. Phantom was strong, and could obviously take care of himself, but the size of his support system was currently unknown. If Maddie caused a falling out between the spectral teen and her two children, Phantom could be affected rather badly. This would likely lower his performance in battle, placing Danny and Jazz in greater danger. Besides, what right did Maddie have to subject Phantom to such bad treatment, especially after all the good that he had done for her family and the town?

Another thought wormed its way into the woman's mind, informing her that her kids were already targets. Danny had said so himself – ghosts targeted them because their parents were hunters.

The way things looked, it was better for everyone if Phantom maintained a close relationship with the Fenton children.

With a sound like the vacuum trying to suck up an aluminium potato chip bag, the matter of the Ghost Zone warped, forming a vortex of swirling green.

It was exactly the same colour as Phantom's eyes, and Maddie furrowed her brow, wondering if the colour of the halfa's ectoplasm matched the portal due to his accident. Upon inspection of her own ghost form, the woman had noticed that her hair and eyes had simply reversed into their composite colours, but that couldn't be that case with her strange new companion. After all, she would have noticed if any of Danny's friends had red eyes…

Jack stretched out his hands, and Phantom hoisted the man into the air with a grimace. With a flick of his spectral tail, the boy angled himself in the right direction and disappeared into the portal. Maddie followed, passing through the trans-dimensional gateway with a not- unpleasant tingling that made her fingers and toes curl.

Home.

The lab gleamed, familiar and safe. Everything was exactly how she had left it, and for a moment, it was as if nothing had changed.

Jazz was next to the portal's control panel, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Such movement from the normally still girl was immediately apparent, as it was behaviour she adopted only when anxious.

"I'm alright," Phantom announced in answer to her pinched expression – he didn't even consider that she might have been worried about her parents more than she was worried about him.

Maddie noted with growing dread that Jazz's expression relaxed when the halfa said that, the girl's fidgeting immediately ceasing.

"Vlad keeps calling, at least once a day," the young woman announced. For some reason, Maddie wasn't sure which halfa this was directed towards. "He heard about the bank, and has apparently been worried sick."

Phantom tossed his head and rolled his eyes, giving off the impression that he cared about the man to about the same degree as Maddie.

Jack was the only person to smile at the news, moving behind his wife and placing gentle hands on her shoulders. "That's nice," he remarked. "We'll call Vladdie soon to let him know everything's alright."

Phantom shared a glance with Jazz, smirking. Maddie could only notice how the boy held himself, the way he flicked his head as his hair fell into his face, that little smile he shared with Jazz as though they were involved in some secret joke…

Everything seemed off-kilter, and the answers to the riddle that was this strange young hybrid just wouldn't present themselves to Maddie's muddled mind.

She hadn't wanted to believe it was him, because then that would mean…

The door at the top of the stairs slammed open, a figure in faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt taking the steps two at a time.

"Mum!" Danny shouted, launching himself at the woman with such force that she would have gone sprawling had Jack not been standing at her back. "You're okay," her son breathed, clutching her tightly.

Maddie carded her fingers through that mop of dark hair. "Yes, Sweetie, I am. Sorry for scaring you."

He was trembling, laboured breaths pressed into her shoulder as the boy clutched his mother.

Swallowing, Maddie risked a glance at Phantom. The halfa leaned against the portal's frame, eyes closed as though concentrating – keeping his form after carrying Jack for several minutes must have taken a greater toll on the kid than she had originally thought.

Danny pulled away from their hug, turning to face the ghost himself. "Thanks for rescuing my mum," he said.

Phantom opened his eyes and flashed the family a grin full of perfect teeth. "No problem," he responded, voice tight. "Now, I really have to go see my parents and get an early night."

"I picked up your homework," Danny offered. "I left it at your place, on your desk."

The ghost's face dropped into an unimpressed stare. "I'm not even going to acknowledge that you just said that. Jack, Maddie, I'll be in touch."

A gust of freezing air, and he was gone.

Maddie stared at the spot where he had been standing, her mind suddenly blank. For a minute there she had actually _believed_ that Phantom and Danny were the same person.

Her eyes had just proven that impossible, but her gut told her otherwise; if there was anything Maddie had learned from her years of hunting, it was that your gut never steered you astray.

Danny turned to his parents. "So, I know you just got back and all, but what's for dinner? I'm starving."


	12. Chapter 12

When the oven door blew off, Maddie jumped so high that her head brushed the ceiling.

Phantom cackled from where he sat, a shield protecting him from the ectoplasmic lasagne that was now coating a good portion of the kitchen. The huntress shot him a playful glare, turning intangible to phase the stuff off herself. "You'll have to teach me how to make those shields," she grumbled.

"Shields are hard." Phantom was still grinning, and he allowed his barrier to dissipate into little flakes of glowing green that dissolved as they sank towards the floor. "Turning intangible is much more convenient – it's easier, and takes up less energy."

"Then why are _you_ using shields?" she snapped, retrieving the mop from where it was tucked behind the pantry door.

"Training," the kid announced, running a finger through the goo that covered the table. "By the way, this isn't edible for anyone."

The huntress sighed, tucking a plastic bucket beneath the faucet and turning on the hot water. In the past three weeks, Phantom had taught her something about ghosts nearly every day, whether it be a scientific fact, a titbit concerning their culture, or information regarding her powers. They trained together most evenings, and had set a date next week for her first real fight in ghost form. Maddie would start with the Box Ghost, and then work her way through defeating each of Amity Park's regular spectral terrorists.

She was looking forwards to the practical application of her new powers. As she scrubbed stubbornly at the goo, Maddie sighed as it refused to budge.

It seemed that everything she did lately needed ghost powers to fix.

Phantom grinned, getting off his seat and hovering about a foot above the filthy floor. "Join me," he invited.

Maddie dropped the mop and morphed into her ghost form, floating beside her young mentor. "What are we going to do?"

Phantom pressed the palms of his hands together, inhaling deeply. "It's all in the breath," he explained. "You can use a basic type of telekinesis to control ectoplasm – that's how you control your energy blasts. If you see the goo as spectral energy, you can manipulate it to your will. But you have to control your breathing to control the energy, so it's all to do with breath."

Settling into a stance that she had learned in her days at the dojo, Maddie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Letting it out in a whoosh, she forced as much air as possible from her lungs before breathing deeply once again.

Focusing on the energy that throbbed within her core, the woman swept her hands up and out, snapping glowing golden eyes open.

The ectoplasm that covered the room lifted into the air with her movement. Following Phantom's quiet instruction, the huntress brought her hands together and lowered them to the level of her chest.

The hovering goo coalesced into a ball, moving through the air to position itself over the sink.

"Now, absorb that energy," Phantom instructed, his hands gently guiding hers to touch the massive gelatinous blob.

The glowing was sucked away as it was absorbed into the huntress' body, and Maddie gave a shaky laugh as the now perfectly normal blob of lasagne lost its ability to fly and collapsed into the sink with a sad squelch.

"Why couldn't I make that keep floating?" Maddie queried, settling her feet on the floor and switching into human form.

Phantom tipped the water from the bucket into the sink, washing away the ruined meal. "You're not ready yet," he responded. "In fact, you'll probably feel really tired in a moment, since your core will drain your body of as much energy as it can. The stuff you absorbed is like a cup in comparison to the lake of energy you just used."

True to his words, a wave of exhaustion settled over the woman like a heavy blanket. She staggered, leaning against the teen and gasping for air.

Phantom smiled fondly, leading her to a seat. "I'll go tell Jack that he needs to deal with dinner tonight," he announced.

"But we were going to train once dinner was done!"

"I think training's over for the day," the boy insisted, heading for the lab door. "You stay there, and Jack'll be up to give you a hand in a moment."

He disappeared through the heavy metal door, and Maddie stared absently at its yellow biohazard sticker as it clicked shut behind him.

It had been stressful at first, learning how to use her powers. Accepting that she was half ghost had proven more difficult than Maddie thought it would be, and hiding her powers from the kids was almost impossible. Jazz she wasn't so sure about, but Danny obviously knew, and had even gone so far as to yank his sinking mother out of the floor when passing her in the hallway. As soon as her feet were once again planted firmly on solid carpet, he had released her arm and continued on his way out the front door.

The worst thing about it all was that Danny didn't mention anything, and acted like nothing was amiss. It would have been better if he confronted her – at least if the boy broached the subject, Maddie wouldn't feel so guilty whenever she caught his eye.

She couldn't even figure out how he was feeling about it, since his emotions were fairly calm for the majority of the time. This bothered Maddie, but not as much as Phantom's comment the other day – he had mentioned whilst answering her questions about duplicating that one duplicate can be in human form while another one is in ghost form.

Everything was so confusing, and whenever Maddie felt like she was finally getting to the bottom of the mystery shrouding her son and his friends, things would blow up in her face and prove every theory she had wrong.

When Phantom trained with her, Danny often walked in on them. The two boys were so similar, but Maddie only ever noticed those similarities when dealing with the boys separately. It was as though when both Phantom and Daniel were in the same room, it became difficult to scrutinise one for too long without your thoughts becoming jumbled.

It was exceedingly frustrating.

The lab door slammed open as footsteps hurried down the stairs, Danny and Jack both bursting into the kitchen at the same time.

"Mads!" Jack shouted, rushing forwards to press the back of a hand against her face. "Phantom said that you over-exerted yourself."

Maddie shrugged, trying to look around her husband at the teen that stood in the doorway. Her son's thoughtful expression morphed into a strained smile when he caught her looking, and Danny sniffed the air. "It smells like dinner's going to explode," he remarked casually.

"It already did," Maddie announced, smirking when Jack wilted.

"I was looking forwards to the lasagne," the large man whined.

There was a momentary flash of irritation as Maddie wrestled with the thought that he had no right to complain when she was going through such difficulty. She pushed the thought away, taking a deep breath and trying to focus on something more positive – Phantom had said that ghost powers worked best when the user had a level head and calm spirit.

Maddie had taken that information to heart, trying her best to be calm and polite. On occasion she had to pause to clear her head, but it got easier as time went wrong. Jack had caught on fairly quickly, and agreed wholeheartedly to give this new attitude a go once it was explained to him.

This new outlook on her emotions also appeared to positively affect relationships within the family, with everyone being much more polite to each other.

"How about we order something?" Maddie suggested. "Since Jazz has her final big assignment due tomorrow, could you go ask her what she'd like us to order, Danny?"

The boy nodded, slipping out of sight. A moment later, the stairs creaked, and Maddie relaxed.

"Phantom said he's been doing some research about turning people into halfas," she told Jack as he began to rub her shoulders.

"Hmm?"

Tilting her head back, the woman moaned in appreciation. "He said that your suggestion about using a ghost portal is too risky, because there's an extremely high chance that it will kill you outright. A transplant is the only way to go, and apparently it needs to be a major organ that helps transport substances around the body. So far, we're thinking either a kidney or the liver, but even those will still have risks involved."

"Was that what he came to talk to you about?"

"Not really," she admitted, "although he did mention that. He really came to warn me that the Wisconsin ghost is actually a really dangerous halfa called Plasmius, and that he's started hanging out in town for the first time in a few months. Phantom said that we should stay away, since as soon as Plasmius finds out I'm a halfa he'll try to kill you and kidnap me because he's been after an immortal mate ever since he found out about his own eternal life. Plasmius is also the guy who made Danielle."

The thought filled her with terror. Then she thought about Phantom, and that fear was replaced with sorrow.

The kid shied away from the topic of immortality, leading Maddie to suspect that he wasn't yet comfortable with the notion. Besides the sweet little girl who had ducked into Fentonworks one day to briefly meet with Phantom's new allies, there were no other halfas. At first, Maddie had consoled herself with the thought that this girl and Phantom might eventually grow fond enough of each other to fall in love – they were already very close, after all – but that was before he had revealed that Danielle was actually his clone.

The thought of a clone both appalled and fascinated Maddie, but she knew better than to ask any questions right now. Maybe given a few years of friendship, but for now, Phantom appeared to be fiercely protective of the girl. In addition, he had admitted that Danielle's core was not stable enough for her to ever be immortal, and she would age and die like any human.

No matter how much Maddie puzzled over a way to make the girl's core stabilise fully, no solution was even slightly feasible.

That still left the issue of an eternal companion for the boy, and Maddie had lost several hours of sleep over the past week trying to think up a solution.

Jack's fingers tightened around his wife's shoulders. "I need ghost powers," he breathed.

"We agreed to wait."

"Mads, I can't protect you against powerful ghosts!" the man shouted, moving to face his love. He cupped her face in his hands, a tear slipping down a ruddy cheek. "What if Phantom somehow can't save you? As a human, I can barely do anything!"

"Just wait until the end of the school year," Maddie begged, standing and pulling her husband into an embrace. "We'll be extra careful until then. Jazz'll be going off to college, so she won't have to get involved."

"But that's-"

"Only six weeks from now." Stroking away that water that streaked her husband's cheeks, Maddie captured his mouth in a gentle kiss. "I promise that everything will be okay," she whispered when they paused to breathe.

"Only six weeks," Jack murmured, his lips brushing hers with feather-light touches as they formed each word.

"I promise."

They kissed once again, just as Danny slammed open the door. "Jazz said she wants that Chinese chicken stuff…" He trailed off, glancing from one parent to the other before backing out of the kitchen.

Both adults chuckled as he slammed the door, footsteps thumping up the stairs as Danny made his getaway.

Maddie knew that she would find out the exact nature between Danny and Phantom soon enough – she just had to be patient, and wait until they were ready to tell her the truth. For now, all Maddie could do was sit quietly, and hope that her suspicions were wrong.


	13. Chapter 13

A pile of twisted metal appeared out of thin air to clatter onto the kitchen table, startling Maddie into dropping her monthly copy of _Spectral Science_. Phantom shimmered into view, scowling as the huntress gingerly removed a half-melted screw from the still-smoking wreckage of a Fenton Thermos.

"How in the world did you manage _this?_ " she murmured, holding up the blob of metal that had once worked to hold together the ruined contraption. A contraption that, under several tests varying between extreme pressure and high-level ectoplasmic assault, had come out the other side with barely even a scuff mark.

The teen pulled off singed gloves, examining palms that glowed red with burns. "Sabotage," he grunted as his hands were enveloped in ice crystals that immediately began to melt from the residual heat. "Damned Plasmius and his stupid meddling."

"Phantom," Maddie started in a warning tone. Those burns looked rather nasty, and they travelled up his wrists and beneath the sleeves of a burned uniform. She didn't like seeing the boy injured in any way, but when something like this could have been prevented, it made her feel sick to the stomach.

Whoever this kid was, he paid a ridiculously high price for his heroics.

"I wasn't fighting him!" the boy insisted, throwing up his dripping hands. "The guy thinks I'm up to something since I don't attack him whenever he comes into town now, so he's been spying on me and since that hasn't given him any clues he's resorted to ruining all of my other fights in any way he can!"

Replacing the screw, Maddie got to her feet and fetched a cloth, dampening it under the faucet. Phantom squirmed as she turned towards him, but allowed the woman to gently clean away the soot and ectoplasm that streaked his burned face.

Domestic exchanges between Phantom and the Fenton family had become so normal now that Jazmine didn't even raise an eyebrow as she entered the kitchen. The ghost kid in question simply nodded to the older girl, wriggling away from the cloth and passing a hand that glowed blue across his face. The burns there were coated with tiny crystals of ice as well, and Maddie fought back the urge to laugh as they clung to his singed eyebrows.

Danny strolled into the room, whining. "Jaaazz, I really need a lift to the arcade, Tucker'll be waiting for me."

As Jazz scowled at her brother and told him he could get there on his own because she had important homework to do, Maddie glanced at her spectral companion. Phantom stared at Danny as though the kid was all that existed, almost as if the human would disappear if the halfa's attention was diverted.

It wasn't proof of duplication, but it was a detail that could lead to proof. Proof that Maddie was determined to get as soon as possible.

Danny stomped out of the room without so much as acknowledging its other occupants, the front door slamming behind him. Phantom visibly relaxed, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.

Maddie opened her mouth but the doorbell stopped any words from taking form. Glaring at Phantom as though _daring_ him to run off, she jerked her head in the direction of the front door. "Jazz, could you be a sweetie and get that for me, please?"

Slamming her glass of water onto the table, the young woman marched out of the kitchen, muttering darkly about impending exams and how she didn't have time to deal with the family's dramas.

"Seems like everyone's having a stressful afternoon," Phantom observed before blowing on his burned hands. His breath was sparkling, re-coating the damaged skin with a much thicker layer of ice.

"You stay put," Maddie ordered. "I don't want you running off when you still have injuries for me to tend to."

"Whatever," the teen mumbled, sinking into a chair. "But I have the right to turn invisible."

"I don't see why you should have to, when everybody in town knows about our truce," Maddie argued as the kitchen door swung open.

The first thing Maddie registered was a scream of "Ghost!" followed by the whine of an ectopistol.

Phantom cried out as the blast clipped his ear, shearing off a lock of white hair. As the strands floated to the floor, they turned from white to deepest black.

"Maddie, get back!" Vlad cried, adjusting his aim. "I'll get this spook for you!"

"No!" Maddie shouted, tugging on the billionaire's arm. The blast hit the window behind Phantom, sending glass across the floor and bench in a tinkling cascade. "He's not a threat! We have a truce! Phantom _saved_ me at the bank, remember?"

The ghost boy cowered in his chair, hands clapped over the bleeding ear. The sight sent Maddie's mind into a confused sense of failure. Was it because she had failed to protect a ghostly ally from harm in what was supposed to be a safe zone, or because she suspected that she had just failed to keep her son safe in their own home?

"This boy is a menace!" Vlad shouted, continuing to brandish the weapon. "If you can't see that, then I have no choice but to eliminate him!"

Her vision blurring in fury, Maddie grasped the man by the shoulders, slamming him against the wall. "Vladimir Masters, either get a grip of yourself or leave my home. I owe Phantom my life, and you will not harm him in this house, is that _clear?!_ "

Vlad swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with the movement. "Very well," he drawled as Maddie released him from her grasp. "I suppose that I can make an exception, and not blast this filth into oblivion."

Phantom glared at his assailant.

Vlad glared back.

Maddie felt sick to her stomach. If her suspicions were right, then the animosity between the two was entirely expected. But why on Earth would Vlad know Danny's ghostly identity?

A plan presented itself to her, reckless and full of holes. But if it worked, then Maddie's questions might finally be answered.

The only problem was that it required the woman to leave her two guests alone.

Fisting her fingers at her sides to hide their sudden trembling, Maddie edged towards the door. "I have to go get the first aid kit. Vlad, Phantom, please be civil. I'll only be a moment, I think Jack left it down in the lab…"

The halfa boy sent her a pleading look that almost made the woman cave. "I'll come with you," he insisted.

"No, Jack's been working down there all day, and I don't think you want to get caught if you surprise him. Remember how he shot you the last time you startled him? He still needs to get used to you being around! I'll be quick!"

Phantom scowled, and Maddie knew that he didn't buy her lie for a second. Still, the kid gave an almost imperceptible nod. For whatever reason, he trusted her.

Vlad Masters simply leaned against the wall, fiddling with the ectogun in his hands.

Slipping out the door, Maddie allowed it to fall almost shut behind her. The gap was just a sliver, with the woman pressing herself against the wall beside it and peering through.

The billionaire dropped the gun onto the table and stepped towards the boy. Phantom stood his ground, meeting Vlad's gaze unflinchingly.

Maddie's hands flew to her mouth as the adult backhanded the teen across the face and shoved him against the edge of the table. "How _dare_ you!" the man growled.

Phantom swallowed, tongue darting out to lick at a split, bleeding lip.

He remained silent.

" _What_ have you told her?"

"Nothing," the boy responded evenly, as though he was not currently being restrained by a man that had just struck him in the face. "She does not know who you are, and she doesn't know who I am, unless she's figured it out on her own."

Vlad took a deep breath though his nose, releasing the teen. "Your mother insists that I am dangerous."

"I warned her about Plasmius," Phantom told him, jerking his head to the side so that his spine clicked back into place. "She already doesn't like Masters, so I didn't feel the need to warn her about that half of you."

Maddie clutched at the wall for support. Now that Phantom pointed it out, it was _so_ obvious, and she felt as though she had subconsciously known the truth for a long time.

Was this what it meant to be a halfa?

This indescribable feeling of hopelessness as the centuries loomed ahead, with nothing to offer release. This constant bickering between rivals, fitting perfectly against a backdrop of the pain of knowing that she had doomed her own _son_ to that kind of life.

Just as he had doomed her.

"Besides," the ghost child continued, "my secret in my own to tell. You don't control that."

"So you plan to reveal yourself?" Vlad murmured, circling the teen like a predator stalking its prey.

Phantom lifted his chin confidently. "My parents deserve to know the truth about me," he announced. "Your secret is yours to tell, just as mine belongs to me, so stay out of my way for once."

It was the admission that Maddie had both longed for and feared.

Her son had saved her life and condemned her to share his eternity by cutting out his own heart. He was standing only a few feet away from her, back straight and head held high in defiance of the villain before him.

Maddie couldn't be more proud and devastated.

"I _will_ have her as my immortal mate," Vlad announced with a purr of delight, "and I have you to thank for doing half of my job for me. Once I've killed your idiotic father, I'll be able to win over your mother without having to deal with the delicate process of turning her half ghost."

This time it was Danny's turn to hit him across the face, hand glowing with a controlled blast of green.

Vlad staggered, hands flying to a nose that streamed with red blood and garish pink ectoplasm. "Why, you little-"

"Looks like Jack left the kit up here after all!" Maddie announced loudly, shoving the door open before they could get into a full-fledged fight. Meeting Vlad's eyes, she allowed her expression to morph into one that conveyed as much fury as possible.

Vlad dropped his charged fist, stepping away from the boy and allowing the energy to flicker into oblivion. "Maddie, I-"

"Out."

Vlad went still, eyes widening. "Maddie-"

"Get out of my house before I shoot you," the woman spat, struggling to hide her guilt behind a mask of anger.

It looked like Danny wasn't the only halfa that she had created. The very thought sent waves of self-loathing through Maddie's mind. It disrupted her thoughts and left behind nothing but the need for Vlad to be _gone_ , gone so that she no longer had to deal with both of them at once, because if there was one thing that Maddie couldn't face at the moment, it was both of her failures in one room.

"It's not what you think, I swear. You see-"

"I told you to leave," the huntress snapped, brushing brusquely past the billionaire and fetching the first aid kit from its place in the pantry.

Danny – for now the boy was undoubtedly Maddie's son – re-claimed his chair. He glared at the intruder with eyes that burned emerald.

Vlad moved towards the door, but could not resist one final jab at the pair. "Well, I'm sure you two need your time to sort some things out, anyway. I'm not the only one with a secret, after all." Waving his hand in farewell, the halfa strolled out of the room.

Clenching her hands around the edges of the first aid box, Maddie seated herself in front of her son.

Danny glanced at her with green eyes that glowed beneath white bangs.

Danny, who had been Phantom all this time. Who protected them all, asking for nothing in return. The child that had been turned half ghost by his parents' own invention.

It made her heart ache with guilt.

With trembling fingers, Maddie unlatched the lid and lifted a packet of gauze from the box. Without speaking, the huntress soaked a piece of the fabric with antiseptic before reaching towards her son.

Danny flinched away from her touch, covering his injured ear. "I'm fine," he insisted.

"No, you're not," Maddie responded as levelly as she could, reaching towards the boy again.

Green eyes followed her trembling fingers. "No, I really should be going. I've bothered you enough today."

"Leave Vlad be," she advised, pressing the gauze against his bloody ear.

The ghost child shuddered, swatting his mother's hand away. "I'm alright."

"No, you're-"

A shudder and a puff of icy breath came from both halfas at the same moment, and the boy got to his feet. "I'll see you tomorrow," he promised.

"Please, just let Jack deal with-"

"Thanks for the help, and sorry for the violence." Flapping his burned hands through the air, the boy headed towards the door.

Twisting the soaked gauze in her fingers, Maddie's mouth moved before her mind could tell it to shut up. "Daniel James Fenton, if you go out that door you are grounded, ghost powers or no!"

The boy froze, one hand clasped around the door handle. For several seconds neither of them moved, and the woman feared that he was going to make a run for it. Then his shoulders sagged as the rings of blinding light snapped into place around a slim waist.

Maddie moved across the room, pulling the boy into her arms and stroking his soft black hair. "Oh, Danny," she murmured, "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

He was shaking, hands moving to clasp at his mother's shirt. Maddie was painfully aware of his hitched breathing, his thin body, the burns that covered his face and arms.

Danny swallowed, pressing his face into her shoulder with a muffled sob. "Mum," he whispered, releasing her clothing and returning the embrace.

Maddie held onto her son as he trembled and carded her fingers through his hair, silently praying that from now on, things would start to be okay again.


	14. Chapter 14

It was something that Maddie had only ever dreamed of in the past.

Danny sat beside her at the steel laboratory bench, actually helping the woman to build a ghost hunting weapon.

Only instead of using the soldering iron, the tip of her son's bare finger was lit with a miniature ectoblast. Its unnatural light was reflected in his green eyes, throwing the ice-coated burns on his face into sharp relief.

After years of pleading and threatening, the teen was finally helping her in the lab. Even better, he was obviously interested, even suggesting his own improvements and obviously enjoying himself.

He was talking as he worked, explaining in detail the different heat intensities of ectoblasts and how to achieve these extreme levels. Although it was the language of ghosts that rolled off his tongue, Maddie understood every single word, and had even contributed to the conversation in that same dialect.

Now she just listened, staring at the tiny spark of compressed energy that danced blue at the tip of her boy's finger. The miniature blast danced like a flame, but with a much more viscous appearance, and the huntress couldn't take her eyes off it. "… and blue energy, like the one I'm using now, is the most stable type of ectoenergy, but it's also the weakest. Still, it's strong enough to be used for this sort of stuff… Mum, are you listening to me?"

Blinking to regain focus, Maddie smiled at her son. "Of course I am, Sweetie. But I don't know why you're telling me all of this right now, when we have plenty of time for lessons later. There are far more important things to talk about."

Like the fact that this was her fault.

Daniel Fenton was condemned to a lonely eternity of being one of the only living creatures with ghost powers all because Maddie hadn't bothered to lock the lab.

From the way her expression fell, Danny made a pretty good guess as to what his mother was thinking.

"It's not your fault," he insisted, "and we're not getting into this again. It's a good thing that I'm a halfa, or a whole lot of people would be dead."

"But you're not _happy_ , are you?"

Danny blew white strands out of his eyes. "I'm happier than I'd be if a lot of people I care about had died from ghost attacks… and bank robbers." The last one was accompanied by a smirk.

The lump in her throat was suffocating in its enormity. "Would you give it up if you had the chance?"

Letting the light on his finger wink out of existence, Danny shook his head. "I have before, but that was years ago. I used to want to be human, but now I think I've forgotten what that even feels like. I can't imagine having to walk down the hall to the toilet instead of teleporting, and don't even get me started on how upsetting it'd be to lose my flight or intangibility.

"Besides, my powers help me to save a lot of people. Being half ghost made me who I _am_ , and they're now as much a part of me as my love of stars or my best friends. So, no, I won't give my powers up, and I don't want you to try to convince me to."

Taking the soldered wires that he held out, Maddie felt a burst of pride at her son's words. "I was just checking," she reassured him.

"Good," the boy huffed, repositioning in its brace the metal cylinder that would serve as a new Fenton Thermos.

Maddie placed the wires in their correct position before directing her son to solder them in place. As Danny's finger lit up again, she watched the way that little blue light danced with life; technically dead, but so full of potential and the promise of magnificent results if utilised in the correct way by someone skilled in its wielding.

"Did it take you long to learn that?"

Danny snorted, his free hand lighting up with another blue spark. This one was more of a shard than a flame, and was sharp enough to cut an extra chunk of solder free from its wire. "Let's just say that Vlad's been aching to teach me stuff from the get-go, and every now and then he'll let stuff slip when we fight because he'll be so frustrated that I'm not at the same level as he is. Our relationship improved a lot over the past year or so, and I'd teach him stuff about cryokinesis and cores in general while he gave me advice on practically every other power."

"Things seemed pretty bad upstairs."

"Mhm," Danny mumbled, chewing on his lower lip as he used tongs to carefully place the new bit of solder. "Some of the only things I won't let him near are you and Dad, so he's been pretty pissed at me since he figured out you were a halfa a few days ago."

Maddie dipped her gloved fingers into the drawer beside her, producing a screw and its corresponding screwdriver. "He's overreacting a little bit," she said, readying the case of ectobatteries. These were a new invention, and were powered by ambient ectoenergy, which was found everywhere in both the human and ghost realms. No more being left defenceless in a fight thanks to sloppy weapons maintenance!

The patent also brought in quite a nice profit for the inventors, as did several other Fenton innovations. Most of which had only been created recently, with Phantom's help.

If she thought hard enough, he had been there for much longer than the past few months of Maddie's halfa status. Always looking out for them, both in the lab and in the field, right back to that first encounter with the hospitality ghost who had decided to haunt Casper High's cafeteria.

The guilt that had been threatening to overwhelm Maddie since Danny's altercation with Vlad began to seep away. With its retreat, the light of a promising future slipped into the woman's thoughts. It kept to the edge at first, like a shy child in the playground on their first day of school. Hoping, as it stood on tiptoes and tried to not look to apprehensive, that it would be invited in and given a permanent place.

Maddie was only too happy to embrace this light.

Danny took his hands away from the Thermos that they were building, allowing his mother to screw the battery pack into its socket.

He blew on cherry-red hands that were still badly blistered, and Maddie sighed as frost crept from the tips of his fingers up his arms, disappearing beneath black hazmat that had been pushed up to his elbows.

Things were going to be better now. There were no more lies, no more secrets. All that was left was a future relationship that she couldn't wait to build. Where Danny had been distant and slipping ever further away, he now sat right next to her. Ghost powers on either end really weren't a problem when there was a badly damaged mother-son relationship to repair.

Only one thought stopped Maddie's thoughts before they could be fully realised.

The door upstairs slammed, followed by the familiar, heavy stomping of a large man in black and orange.

"Is there anything left from dinner?" Jack bellowed from the kitchen, his magnificent voice easily heard through the lab's heavy metal door.

"Yeah," Danny shouted, "there's half a plate of pasta!"

"Thanks, Phantom!"

A moment later, the fridge door dimly slammed from somewhere above them.

Where this domestic exchange, once so alien but now so normal for the halfa and his hunter, had barely penetrated Maddie's troubled mind, that abrupt sound jolted her into new levels of anxiety.

Jack had to know.

"Danny…"

"Mmm?"

"There's something you need to do as soon as you think you can."

Jack needed to know the truth, to hear it from his son's mouth. Everything hinged upon the Fenton patriarch's reception of this news.

Another thought weaselled its way into Maddie's mind, and she almost crumbled.

On top of everything else, how was she going to cope with what she had done to Vlad?


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick violence warning for the rest of the fic. See the tags for details. Thanks for reading!

The doors of the derelict building slammed in the wind, making Jack jump. Moonlight streamed through gaps in the wooden planks that formed the walls and ceiling of the barn, practically rotting off their nails.

"Why would you even think of checking out a haunted farm in the middle of the night?" Phantom huffed, adjusting his grip on an ectogun.

Jack flapped his hands at the spectre in an attempt to get him to shut up.

Phantom had been using the Fentons' kitchen to patch up an injured leg when Jack tried to sneak out. There had been e brief altercation, but neither seemed willing to argue loud enough to disturb he Fenton women, and had taken their disagreement outside. Despite the barn being secluded and the hour late, a ghost was a ghost, and if hunters didn't deal with it, someone could get hurt. True to his stubborn nature, Jack didn't let the kid's objections stop him from leaving.

It seemed that he had finally found someone whose stubbornness and protective nature rivalled his own.

The limping halfa's boot slipped on rotten hay, and Phantom would have gone sprawling if he didn't have Jack's shoulder to grab. "Stupid Plasmius," he grumbled as he righted himself.

Jack wasn't sure how useful a powerless halfa would be, but the kid had hunting experience and was a good shot with a gun. If he was perfectly honest with himself, Jack was glad that Phantom had insisted on tagging along – the inventor's aim was terrible, and it was nice to have someone watching his back while he controlled the technology.

Twisting the dial on his tracker, Jack frowned. "This place was brimming with energy when I scanned it remotely from the lab."

"Maybe the ghost's gone," Phantom said, glancing at the scanner's blank radar. "My ghost sense isn't working right now, so I can't tell you if this place is safe, or if your machine's just busted."

There was danger here.

Jack might be more of an inventor than a hunter, but he would always be sensitive to spiritual activity. Descended from a long line of empaths and ghost hunters, the man always knew when something wasn't quite right.

That was the true reason that he had trusted Phantom so quickly – in a relaxed situation, Jack felt no trace of malice or foreboding emanating from the teen. Even though Phantom had healed his wife and protected his family, it would have meant nothing if Jack automatically felt afraid around him.

A flurry of activity in the shadows beneath the hayloft sent mice fleeing, their tiny forms darting away from the spot to disappear through holes in the floor and walls. The hairs on the back of Jack's neck stood on end, and he reached for his own ectopistol with a trembling hand.

This feeling wasn't coming from Phantom, and the radar wasn't picking anything up.

Somewhere in that barn, something was alive that wanted to kill them.

"Jack?" Phantom breathed, settling into a fighting stance as best he could in order to improve balance on the slippery floor. Even with ghost powers out of order, he obviously felt that same foreboding.

Footsteps.

The noise moved towards the pair from the corner of darkness, sending more mice running. Although a person should have been easily visible, none could be seen as the steps reached the two ghost hunters.

Jack had shifted to press his shoulder against Phantom's back, effectively keeping both of their gazes on the spot where the steps had stopped whilst still guarding the teen's back.

"Fools," a voice snaked from the invisible being.

Phantom let out a groan of disgust. "Oh my _gosh_ , Fruitloop, you actually had me going there."

"Aren't you afraid that I'm here to hurt you?" the voice asked, voicing Jack's thoughts exactly.

"Go ghost and turn visible," Phantom said. "You never hurt me badly, and you've already hit me pretty hard tonight. Let's all part ways, and you can have another whack at me tomorrow."

"I am not here for you, Daniel."

Phantom moved so that he was shielding Jack's body. "Don't even think about it!" he shouted, shifting from irritated teenager to protective and slightly pissed off hero. It was an instant transition that Jack had become familiar with over the past few months, making the man wonder exactly how many 'masks' Phantom wore.

"You really have no say in the matter in that condition," the source of Jack's unease said. "Why do you think I took such pains to render you powerless? Now there is no way for you to rescue this pathetic man."

"Show yourself, fiend!" Jack bellowed, angling his gun towards the source of that unsettlingly familiar voice.

The smile materialised first, gruesome with the split lip and bruised jaw. "Your little friend can punch rather hard," it said as the rest of the body began to form in stages, making Jack think of the Cheshire cat from Wonderland.

He had never liked cats.

Jack's old college buddy slowly formed in a shaft of moonlight, the grin never leaving his face as he smoothed back silver hair and straightened the cuffs of a sleek black suit.

Vlad.

Jack blinked a couple of times, staring as his friend appeared out of nothing. His mind presented the answer instantly – with one halfa pressed up against him, Jack had no trouble identifying another one.

Everything in the world suddenly seemed as though it was about to cave in, crushing the man beneath a pile of rubble.

And he would deserve it.

"The proto-portal," Jack breathed, allowing the gun to drop back to his side. He didn't holster the weapon – that feeling of danger was still as strong as ever.

But how could he ever shoot Vlad?

Phantom raised an eyebrow. "Are you nuts?" he snapped. "All these years of keeping everything all hush-hush, and one night you just decide to lure us to an abandoned barn so you can show off your invisibility in human form?"

"One day I'll teach you that gradual reappearing trick," Vlad promised, disarming Phantom with a simple jab and twist. "Maybe once I've taken my rightful place as your father?"

Everything was wrong. Jack stared at his old friend in horror as light swept over the man, turning him into the blue-skinned, fanged spectre clothed in red and black and white that had terrorised Amity Park for so many years.

Where Phantom had been obviously innocent for anyone who cared too look, this one's ledger dripped scarlet.

"In your nightmares," Phantom responded, moving to punch Plasmius in a nose that was swollen and crusted with blood from their earlier altercation.

The older halfa caught the fist before it could connect. "Such bad manners," he chided, swiping a knife that glowed red across the back of the kid's hand.

Phantom gasped as a line of red and green welled up in its wake, pulling his hand back and tearing off the glove.

Plasmius chuckled, summoning twin bursts of red energy to his hands. "Farewell, Jack. I will take good care of your family. Daniel, I trust that I'll see you when you re-form."

As he spoke, the ghost flicked his wrists, sending the blasts sailing through the air to collide with the barn's walls. Although rotted to the point of collapse, the wood was barely damp after an uncharacteristically dry winter, and burst into flames.

Jack aimed and fired, but the blast from his gun whizzed harmlessly past Vlad's shoulder, hitting the back wall of the barn and setting that ablaze as well.

Laughing, Plasmius gave a mocking salute. "This way, nobody will be able to blame me for your murder," he announced before disappearing in a flash of light that Jack recognised from seeing Phantom teleport.

Phantom was crouched on the floor, staring at a hand that had turned the colour of asphalt. The halfa's undamaged hand dipped into the top of his boot, producing a wickedly long knife. Holding up his damaged hand, the kid turned to Jack. "Quick, it's spreading!" he shouted. "You've got to break my arm at the elbow right now, or my entire body will turn to dust!"

The building was on fire, Phantom had a knife, and the kid's hand was already falling apart at the tips of his fingers.

Grasping Phantom's shoulder and slack wrist, Jack knelt beside him as though proposing. Taking a deep breath, the man brought the elbow down against his knee. It bent the wrong way with a wet snap, and Phantom sobbed involuntarily before laying his arm against the floor.

The boy shoved his glove into his mouth, screwing tear-filled eyes shut and holding out the weapon.

Jack snatched the knife from his trembling fingers, bringing it down in the busted joint with all the force he could muster. It took a couple of sawing motions for the limb to be completely amputated, and Jack could only be glad that Phantom had thought to clear the path by breaking bones.

The kid's scream was terrible in its intensity, and Phantom curled in on himself, clutching at the stump of his arm. He stayed that way, seemingly unable to move, as the hand crumbled into powder, leaving an abandoned forearm that slowly began to morph into dust as well.

All of a sudden, reality caught up the man, and Jack Fenton felt a scream swell somewhere in his chest.

He had just cut off the kid's _arm!_

"Did it spread?" Jack said, reaching to lay his hand on the shoulder that was attached the Phantom's good arm.

The sobbing boy shook his head. "Fire," he gasped. "Go!"

Immiscible blood and ectoplasm was everywhere, smearing in streaks across clothing and skin and pooling on the floor.

Jack gathered Phantom into his arms, holding the trembling body close as he raced towards the doors. Heat washed over the hunter, his hazmat providing little protection from something so intense. "We're going to have to run through the fire," he warned as they approached the wall of flame.

At least the trip would be uninterrupted, since one of the doors had already fallen off its hinges.

Phantom shuddered, pressing his face into Jack's shoulder. "Hot," he gasped, and Jack remembered that the kid had an ice core.

"Okay," Jack said, keeping his voice as level as possible. As much as he wanted to scream and cry and throw up, panic would do nothing but ensure death. "Just hold your breath, close your eyes, and count to ten. I promise we'll be outside in the cold."

There was so much blood.

The halfa shut his eyes and took a deep breath, and Jack ran headfirst into the fire.

There was heat and light, and then they were out under the stars and their hair and eyebrows were giving off smoke.

Jack placed the teen carefully in the grass. Stripping off his orange jumpsuit, the man cut off the sleeve and tied it around Phantom's arm as a makeshift tourniquet. "Hang in there," he pleaded, pulling the fabric as tight as it could go.

Halfas were immortal, Jack knew that much. Vlad had just tried to turn Phantom into dust that would have been burned as well, but it was obvious that the young halfa was fully expected to regenerate from such damage. For a moment Jack wondered if that meant that pulling the kid apart molecule by molecule wouldn't actually destroy him, but the thought was quickly quashed as Phantom gave a cry for help.

"Fire… knife…" he rasped in between laden breaths. "Stop… bleeding…"

Staring at the knife in his hand, Jack felt like he was going to pass out. "But exsanguination won't kill you, will it?"

Phantom's brow scrunched. "Healing… too long… many months…"

With Plasmius on the loose and thirsting for Jack's blood, the man decided that he needed the kid to keep him alive and Maddie safe. Nodding his head, he headed back to the fire with knife in hand.

There really was no other option, since the man never carried a phone on him, and Phantom's had been busted by Plasmius a couple of days ago.

Vlad had planned this well.

Cutting off the other sleeve of his suit, Jack wrapped it around the handle of the knife as further insulation before sticking the blade in the flames. The heat radiating off the fire was incredible, and Jack turned his head to the side, gasping for fresh air as the knife heated.

The blade's tip glowed red when he withdrew it, and Jack hurried back to the groaning boy.

"Okay," the hunter whispered as he knelt beside Phantom, "the knife's ready."

Phantom uncurled just enough to extend his arm. "Stick… to bite?"

Unwinding his sleeve from where it was wrapped around the knife, Jack balled it up and shoved the fabric into the kid's mouth.

The metal had just stopped glowing, and Jack took a deep breath, steeling himself.

Heated metal met the severed flesh with a hiss and the smell of burnt meat.

Phantom's scream was muffled, the muscles in his jaw clenching as his body seized up under the intense pain. Tears streamed down his cheeks, leaving clean trails through the soot.

Jack flipped the knife over, applying the other side to the second half of the wound as the child stiffened and screamed once more.

"Okay, it's done."

Phantom spat out the fabric, leaning his shaking body against his companion. "RV," he whispered.

Right.

Picking up the boy again, Jack carried him to where the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle was parked a few metres away. He buckled Phantom into the shotgun seat, fetching a blanket from the back to cover him with as the halfa's head tilted back, eyelids fluttering.

Phantom gave a faint smile, his hand closing over Jack's. "I'm gunna pass out," he whispered through colourless lips, "but I'll wake up soon."

Jack nodded as the boy closed his eyes. "I'll be here," he promised.

"Best dad ever," came the near-silent reply.

He fell limp in a flash of light, and Jack finally screamed as the ghost boy whose _arm he had just cut off_ turned into a scrawny, familiar teenager with hair as black as the sky above them.


	16. Chapter 16

He didn't know how long he cried, but Jack figured that it had been quite a while. By the time he quelled his tears long enough to pick himself up from where he had collapsed in the damp grass, the fire had reduced the barn to nothing more than a pile of smoking embers.

Wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve, the man leaned against the side of the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle, dampness seeping uncomfortably into the seat of his trousers. Danny's good arm hung over the side of his seat and through the open door, brushing the top of his father's head.

Jack really should take the boy to a hospital, but knew that as soon as Danny went in there, the Guys in White would make sure that he never came out. Besides, halfas healed really fast, didn't they?

The memory of Phantom lying weak and gasping on the laundry floor flashed through Jack's thoughts, and he nibbled on his lower lip nervously.

The fingers on his head were freezing, and this finally spurred the man into action.

Gently lifting his son from the seat, Jack sat back on the ground. Gathering the lanky boy in his arms, the hunter drew the blanket around both of them in the hope that he could transfer some warmth. At least the night was only slightly cool, with no breath of wind to steal heat from the two beings huddled together.

He could have simply turned on the car heater and shut the door with Danny inside, but the man currently wanted nothing more than to hold his son close.

Tilting his head back to lean against the vehicle's exterior, Jack stared at a sky speckled with spots of light.

"I wish you could see them, Danny-boy," he whispered. "The stars are so bright out here without the city's lights. Maybe you could even point out some constellations to me."

Danny lay still and silent in his father's arms, and Jack sniffed as fresh tears spilled down his cheeks.

He was such a failure.

A failure at ghost hunting, at inventing, at protecting the people he cared about.

But most of all, Jack Fenton was a failure at being a friend and father.

Vlad had been that way since _college!_ How had Jack not noticed that he had turned his own best friend into a hybrid? No wonder Vlad sought revenge to such a horrible level. Jack had to apologise, to somehow make everything right between them, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised that reconciliation with Vlad was pretty much impossible.

That still didn't excuse the billionaire's treatment of Danny and Maddie.

Jack felt his heart break as his fingers danced through black hair. What had he done to Danny?

The teen shifted under his father's touch, and Jack frowned at this unexpected development. Danny couldn't have fainted more than an hour and a half ago, but as Jack continued the stroke his hair, the boy groaned and cuddled closer to the source of warmth.

The burns on the ghost child's face had faded so that they were barely visible.

Lifting the blanket, Jack stared at the stump of his son's arm. The charred flesh was no longer inflamed, and glistened with a fresh layer of ectoplasm.

Swallowing down bile at the grisly sight, Jack tucked the blanket back around his boy. If Danny was fully expected to regenerate from a pile of dust that would have been burned in the fire, and if he could re-grow half of his own heart, then wouldn't the kid easily replace his missing forearm? Maybe that's what the ectoplasm was doing already.

Danny moved again, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a sigh.

"Danny?" Jack called softly, stroking the side of his son's face. "How are you feeling?"

The halfa mumbled something incoherent, bleary blue eyes blinking open. He turned towards his father as though trying to settle back down, but the motion obviously hurt – Danny was awake in an instant, crying out and clutching the stump of his arm to his chest. Jack held his shoulders, keeping the boy as still as he could to prevent them getting tangled in the blanket. After a moment of struggling, Danny collapsed back into his father's arms with a whimper, hand still clasped tightly over the site of amputation. Jack belatedly realised that he probably should have bandaged the spot earlier, as well as tend to any other injuries the kid might have.

"Danny…?"

"It hurts," the teen gasped, scrunching up his face.

The sight sent pain shooting through Jack's chest, a small voice whispering in his thoughts that every single injury on Danny's body was thanks to him. Every time he had attacked Phantom, Jack had been hunting his own son. And it was all because the inventor couldn't get a stupid portal to work.

"Where's Vlad?"

Jack shrugged as much as his awkward position would allow before moving the boy to sit more upright. "Gone," the hunter said.

"Oh." Groaning, Danny pulled back the blanket to uncover his glistening stump. "Well, that's healing nicely."

"Does that mean your powers are back?"

The halfa nodded, getting shakily to his feet. "Yeah, but they're too weak for me to fight anything. We have to go warn Mum about Vlad."

Jack helped his son back into the vehicle, fury building within him at each small sound of pain.

Yes, he was angry at Vlad for doing this to them, and for keeping a grudge over an accident that took place over twenty years ago. But more than Vlad, Jack was furious with himself.

How could he have let this happen?

Jack Fenton may be a brilliant inventor, but even he had to admit that he was a careless one. He lived by the policy that hazmat and fume cupboards were adequate protection, never bothering to factor in the involvement of additional people. His workspaces were dangerous, full of hazards that were never addressed because Jack reasoned that so long as he wasn't disturbed, nothing would go wrong.

Vlad disproved that back in college, and Danny had done it again a few short years ago. Jack had simply been too blind to see it until now.

Even worse than having a dangerous lab in their own home, Jack had frightened his son so much that Danny didn't even tell his parents when he became half ghost! The kid had been scared of him for years, and this upset Jack more than anything else.

Buckling into the driver's seat, the burly man double-checked that Danny was wrapped tightly in the blanket. "I'll make this up to you," he promised.

The boy shook his head and hunched tremoring shoulders. "It's not your fault," he whispered.

For now, Jack would simply agree to disagree – Danny's pale face was far too determined, and it wouldn't do to waste the teen's little remaining strength in a petty argument.

They were both silent until the lights of Amity Park glowed on the horizon.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

Jack tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. "I didn't exactly make it easy," he responded. "I guess that I have a lot to thank you for."

A shrug, and Danny turned his head to look out the window as they entered the outskirts of town. "You've saved _me_ plenty of times as well. Remember how you beat the crap out of Skulker when he had me at his mercy just before Christmas?"

"I also shot at you," Jack reminded him.

Danny waved his good hand. "Whatever. I get shot at all the time, so don't worry about it."

"It's my job to worry about you," Jack answered, taking a sharp right.

"Home's the other way," Danny reminded him, ignoring the man's comment as they pulled into the town's twenty-four hour supermarket.

"I think that we need some bad day food." Jack passed Danny a handful of change. "Could you use the public phone to call your mother?"

Nodding, Danny slid intangibly through the car door. "I'll meet you back here," he announced, limping across the parking lot in the direction of the phone box.

Jack parked the car and trotted in the opposite direction, managing to collect all the items he needed and exit the store in under five minutes.

Danny wasn't at the car when the hunter returned.

Deciding to drive over to the phone booth to save his boy the walk back to the car, Jack dumped his groceries in the back before heading for the driver's seat.

Taped to the steering wheel was a white glove covered in blood. On the dashboard there was a message scribbled in permanent marker and very familiar handwriting.

_IT'S EITHER YOU OR DANIEL_

_YOU HAVE 24 HOURS_

_-V_


	17. Chapter 17

Only one person in their family had the brute force required to shake a house in its foundation when he slammed the front door.

"Morning, Honey," Maddie called without looking up from her newspaper. "How'd your hunting go?"

A man covered in filth and blood stumbled into the kitchen. "Is Danny here?" he demanded, clutching a piece of fabric that had probably once been white between his fingers.

Maddie folded up her newspaper, moving slowly as one might when confronted with a terrified animal. "The Sun's barely up, Jack. If he's anywhere, it'd be in bed."

With a shake of his head the man bounded up the stairs, hollering for their son.

Placing the paper on the table, Maddie closed her eyes and took a deep breath before reaching out with her ghost sense. The absence of another core was confirmed by Jack's increasingly frenzied cries of Danny's name – the young halfa wasn't at home, and if Maddie's ghost sense was anything to go by, he was no longer in Amity Park.

Jack thundered back down the stairs. "Mads," he shouted, "can you sense him?!"

The fabric in his hands was covered in red and green splotches.

Clenching her fingers, Maddie got to her feet and dampened a cloth under the tap. "Here, clean your face," she ordered, prising the ruined glove from his grasp and switching it for the towel.

The large man buckled at the knees, practically falling into a chair. "You knew, didn't you?" he demanded, obediently scrubbing the cloth across his face. "Even if he didn't tell you, your ghost sense would have. Why didn't you tell me?"

Jack looked so scared and broken, and it was suddenly difficult to breathe. Maddie's heart beat fast and loud against her ribs as she wondered what on earth could have taken place for Danny to reveal himself when bleeding as much as Jack's stained jumpsuit suggested.

A horrible, unthinkable situation stopped her scrambled suppositions – had Jack done this? The hunter had been a lot kinder to Phantom since their brief stay in the halfa's lair, but it was obvious to anybody who cared to look that there was still some tension to their relationship. Jack had been uncomfortable with having the kid in and out of their home without knowing Phantom's identity, and had been trying to press for the kid's personal details since their return to Amity Park.

Had Jack finally snapped, as he had been wont to do in the past, and forced their son to transform with some ghastly weapon? Did he injure Danny? There was a lot of blood, and judging by her smoke-blackened husband, a fire had also been involved. Maddie took a shaky breath to collect her thoughts. "What happened?"

Jack seemed to deflate, drooping like a plant whose watering had been neglected in summer heat. He quietly told her what had taken place after the ghost alarms went off, right up until getting back to the RV from buying food.

Maddie sat still and stared at the scarred tabletop.

In a way, it would have been better if Jack had done this; at least all they would have had to worry about were some fast-healing injuries and a damaged father-son relationship.

Vlad had their son. Vlad, with his fancy weapons of torture and even fancier plans. Vlad, with his burning drive for revenge and overwhelming possessiveness. The missing arm was suddenly as insignificant as a paper cut.

"I swear I thought he was safe! It should have been me, not Danny. I'm sorry!"

Maddie shook her head numbly. "It's not your fault," she murmured, twisting Danny's glove in her grasp.

"Yes, it-"

"Why didn't Vlad just kill you instead of kidnapping Danny?" she demanded, rising from the chair. Grasping Jack's shoulders, Maddie made him look at her – if Jack started to wallow in guilt now, then they would get nothing done, and Vlad would win. "It would have been easy to kill you in one hit with Danny in such a bad condition."

Jack's eyes grew wide. "Vlad wants you and Danny both," he responded.

"That's right," Maddie said, releasing her husband's shoulders and fetching the poor guy a glass of water. "Whether Danny turned to dust or not didn't matter to him, it was just a plan to get him out of the way for a few months. But since you saved Danny, Vlad decided to kidnap him. He's trying to force us to come to him, where he'll most likely kill you and make me his mate. Vlad wants us to come to him willingly, because that'll be the ultimate victory." The mental image of Vlad's holding her, of him running his hands down the huntress' curves, claiming her even as she kicked and screamed, sent shudders through Maddie's body.

"What makes him think we'll come?" Jack asked. "I mean, it's not like he can actually kill Danny, so why shouldn't we take as much time as we need to rescue him safely? Danny would want that as well, even if he's being hurt."

Maddie sighed, pressing the glass into her husband's hand. She would never hear the end of this one. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to worry you," she confessed. "Danny found out about an invention of Vlad's last week. We were going to destroy it before giving you ghost powers, but it looks like Vlad decided to strike earlier than expected."

Jack went very still, hands curling around his glass of water.

Maddie couldn't blame him – this wasn't something that any of them could take lightly. Vlad's latest creation sent her mind blank in terror, and she had only had her powers for a few weeks. To have lived with a core for as long as Danny had, and to be captured by the maniac with such an awful weapon, must be the worst mixture of anticipation and sheer terror that anybody had ever experienced.

"What weapon?" Jack breathed.

"Tucker's always got tabs on Vlad's computers, and whenever any new data is added, we can hack in to see whatever project he's working on. Tucker told Danny about this about five days ago, but the files had photos with them, so it's already been built. It attacks your core," Maddie said as levelly as she could. "When you're zapped by this weapon, it slowly strips away your powers, one by one. How many powers are taken away depends on the length of time subjected to the weapon. Apparently it leaves your core there, which keeps you immortal with a ghost sense and healing powers, but all the parts of your core responsible for powers are left as nothing more than useless scar tissue."

The glass slipped through Jack's fingers and shattered on the floor. Neither of them paid it any heed.

"He's going to force Danny to stay with him, isn't he? Without his powers, Danny'll be stuck as an immortal human, and won't be able to escape Vlad." Jack's words hitched, and he took a deep breath in an attempt to avoid a descent into hysterics.

"Yes," Maddie responded, twisting the glove around and around her fingers. "Whether we go to save him or not, Vlad's going to destroy Danny's core."


	18. Chapter 18

Never had a closed door seemed so menacing.

Jack knocked on its flawless surface before taking a step backwards. His eyes drifted upwards, surveying the front of a building that looked more like it belonged in _Harry Potter_ than a place for somebody to actually live in. Footsteps from within, and Jack tried to keep his face impassive as Vlad swung the door open.

The halfa's face bore a smugness that made the hunter want to slap it off.

"Welcome," Vlad said, standing to one side. "Come in, please."

Jack moved stiffly, taking a steadying breath as he stepped over the threshold of Vlad's Wisconsin mansion. "Sorry about your driveway," he said, "but the only way to get here on time was to fly, and I've never been able to park the Fenton Jet."

Vlad's knuckles were white as they curled into fists at the sight of his once-perfectly paved driveway; the expensive stones had been shattered and their shards scattered. A ditch was carved into the carefully-maintained lawn, marking the trail that the vehicle had taken from impact on the paving stones to where it now lay in a flowerbed twenty metres away, twisted and dented and smoking gently.

His evident anger sent a stab of satisfaction through the hunter, and the deliberate crash was suddenly worth it despite the bruises and ruined vehicle. This emotion was short-lived, swept aside by the fear that had consumed Jack ever since that disastrous visit to the barn. Shoving hands into the pockets of his hazmat so as to hide their trembling, Jack realised the futility of the gesture as Vlad inhaled deeply with a smile. Of course the bastard could sense his emotions!

"Before you kill me, I want to talk to Danny."

"But of course," Vlad responded as he closed the door. "What sort of revenge would it be if I didn't do this properly?"

Vlad's heeled boots clicked against the marble floors as they headed for the library. Everything here gleamed, from the polished shoes on Vlad's feet to the ornate patterns carved into the staircase banisters.

A pretty cage for a pompous madman.

"Maddie didn't come with you?"

Jack ground his teeth at this transparent attempt at conversation, as though they were simply here for dinner and perhaps a game of chess over a glass of wine or two. "I didn't let her," he responded. "We said goodbye, and I left her in a thermos on our kitchen table. I figured that you'd let her out as soon as you're done with Danny and me."

Vlad tossed his head in an affirmative gesture, and a little of the tension in Jack's shoulders bled out at the man's belief in his story.

"Have you hurt him?"

The billionaire glared at Jack as they entered the library. "He was already injured enough without my adding to his wounds," he sneered. "The boy would have fared much better if you had simply allowed him to turn to dust."

"He would have regenerated from that, right?" Jack asked, leaning against the fireplace in an attempt at nonchalance as they reached the end of the room.

"Of course he would," Vlad said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I only use weapons on Daniel that I've already experienced myself, and it's not the first time he's come across that particular knife."

Jack frowned. "Why use them on yourself?"

Vlad sighed, passing a hand over his face, and Jack had to remind himself that he was here for this man to kill him. "I don't want to _kill_ the boy, just claim him as my son."

"Why?" the large man implored. "We were friends, Vlad. Why would you do something so awful to me, or to Danny?"

A flash of light, and the Vlad that Jack knew was ripped away to be replaced by Plasmius. As much as he wanted to recoil, to press back against the fireplace and whip out an ectogun, Jack forced himself to stand firm.

"You have _no idea_ what you've put the two of us through," Vlad hissed, red eyes glowing with hatred. "I _warned_ you about the portal! We should have given up back when we ran out of funding, but no, you were too pig-headed to quit!"

"Well why didn't _you_ quit?!" Jack shouted back, taking a step towards the ghost of his best friend. He would not show fear. He would not be bullied. For the first time in his life, Jack Fenton was ready to face the skeletons his own closet. "I've always been there for you, Vlad! If you had actually pulled out of the experiment, then we wouldn't be here right now!"

Jack's eyes burned with tears as Vlad began to tremble with fury. "Because we _were_ friends!" the creature screamed, his entire body beginning to glow with an unnaturally bright aura. The wood in the fireplace burst into flames, along with several books on their shelves. Windows set high in the walls shattered, raining glass from the vaulted ceiling in glittering cascades. A thousand voices screamed their torment in twisted, unintelligible tongues. "Friends don't abandon each other!"

If he hadn't been afraid for his life for the past eighteen hours, Jack supposed that he would have been seriously concerned at this particular turn of events. Instead, all he could seem to summon was pity. Pity and guilt, as the hunter was suddenly reminded of Vlad's twenty years in the hospital.

Vlad inhaled shakily, his features twisting. "Don't you _dare_ pity me!" he howled, slamming Jack against the wall in one smooth movement and holding him in place. "You not only did this to me, but to your own son! Why do you think I want him for myself? You're not worthy of the boy, not when you've tried to kill him for the past few years!"

This all seemed horribly unfair. Sure, Jack had carried on with his life while Vlad's had been halted, but that really wasn't justification for the billionaire's actions.

"You've tried to kill him as well," Jack choked around the arm that was pressed against his throat.

"That's been the nature of our relationship from the start." Vlad pressed harder against his former friend's neck, smirking as Jack gagged. "The boy was created with the desire to help you hunt ghosts, so he didn't have the opportunity to develop a grudge, and he couldn't possibly understand how important mine is."

Jack's eyes fluttered, his chest spasming as coloured lights exploded in his rapidly blackening vision.

Vlad smirked and dropped the human. Jack collapsed on the rug, wheezing and scrabbling at a bruised throat as shards of glass cut into his legs and backside. While the hunter struggled to regain his breath, Vlad's face slipped back into a mask of smugness. A wave of his hand, and the burning books were extinguished.

"Get up," Vlad sneered as Jack wiped at streaming eyes. The monster grasped the man's arm, hoisting him to his feet. Before the hunter could say anything the floor disappeared beneath them, Vlad intangibly carrying them both down to a subterranean laboratory. He dropped Jack about a metre above the floor, grinning when the unfortunate man was sent sprawling by an off-balance landing.

The place was brightly-lit, every surface gleaming in fluorescent light. A portal was open in one wall, much the Jack's relief; if it had been shut, he would have had to figure out a way to convince the halfa to open it.

Danny was strapped to a wall in ghost form, his good arm and both legs trapped by metal constraints that glowed green. The boy's face had been wiped clean of bruises and burns thanks to rapid healing, head hanging with eyes closed. His other arm hung limply, the stump glistening with ectoplasm. Jack found himself staring – it appeared as though the ectoplasm had managed to form a ghostly radius and ulna that dripped with glowing slime, and had already started on chunks of the carpals and metacarpals. It was both revolting and fascinating, and if not for the immediate threat of a murderous half ghost hovering behind him, the hunter would have immediately begun to photograph this skeletal limb.

A gun on a tripod was pointed directly at the boy's body.

"Danny!" Jack shouted, lurching towards his son.

The young halfa lifted his head, eyes opening at his father's cry. "No," he breathed before beginning to yank at the restraints. "Why the hell did you come?! Vlad's gunna kill you!"

Reaching the boy, Jack pulled him into a hug as best he could. "No, he's not," he whispered just loud enough for Danny to hear.

Vlad drifted towards the wall of computers, keying a command into the system. The gun began to whine, lights flickering to life along its length. The biggest screen lit up with a clock, its numbers flicking from three minutes to two minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

"Are you serious?!" Danny demanded, wrenching against his bonds with new force. Green eyes were wide with terror, and Jack's stomach lurched with guilt – this entire situation was his fault, after all. If everything went wrong, there was no way to ever fix it.

The other halfa shrugged. "I am going to give you ample time, Daniel. Pledge yourself to me now, and I will spare both your father and your core."

Danny stiffened. "No way…" he choked, the bare bones of his healing limb twitching as a tremor ran through the teen's body.

Jack slipped a hand into his pocket, thumbing the call button on his mobile phone.

"You wouldn't really spare me," the hunter said.

Vlad's smile grew nasty, lips splitting to reveal a set of fangs that gleamed as brightly as his eyes. "I would give you week's head start," he responded. "Daniel's core, however, will be safe from me."

Danny sighed, slumping in his restraints as the clock flicked to two-and-a-half minutes.

"Don't do it," Jack implored. He really wasn't sure whom the plea was directed towards, but that didn't matter, right? All that mattered was getting all of them out of here, alive and hopefully unscathed.

Vlad relaxed into a plush office chair, confident in this ultimatum – he even had the audacity to pour himself a glass of ectoplasm!

Jack began to tug at his son's restraints, sending Danny a glare when he opened his mouth. "Don't even think about it," the hunter hissed.

Danny sent the man a small, sad smile. "The truth is, Dad, I can't live without a core. To be stuck forever as just plain old me, without any powers? I'd rather die. And I can't let him kill you, I can't."

Jack shook his head numbly, trying to fight down rising panic.

Two minutes.

Danny's wrist had split from the tugging, sending streams of ectoplasm and blood trickling over the restraint. The teen was breathing heavily, eyes darting wildly from the clock to the gun to Vlad to Jack…

Jack pressed the call button on his phone again, praying that she'd make it in time. He had no hope of defeating Vlad on his own, after all.

One minute and forty seconds.

Behind Vlad, the swirling portal shimmered with that familiar swirl of greens and yellows. Its perfect surface distorted, sparking as a ghost clad in red entered the lab.

Jack couldn't stop a smile at the sight of his wife, relief sweeping through him. They were going to make it out of here!

Vlad stiffened at his ghost sense, spinning the chair to face the portal. "Maddie? Jack said you were…" the halfa trailed off with a sigh, shooting a smirk back at Jack. "Did you really think that the two of you could beat me?" the billionaire drawled, kicking away the chair and drifting towards the newcomer. "All you've done is save me a trip to Amity Park."

Jack inched towards a control panel set into the wall a few metres away.

Maddie stiffened as Vlad teleported into her personal space. The very sight sent fury coursing through Jack's limbs, but he forced himself to focus on the control panel. One mistake, and this whole rescue could blow up in their faces. Vlad's hand moved to caress the woman's face, the other curving around her waist to pull her flush against him. Maddie's brow creased, and she twisted in his grasp. An elbow slammed into Vlad's nose as a knee met his groin, and the man cried out as Maddie grasped his wrist and twisted him into a lock that drove him to his knees.

Jack reached the control panel and slammed his hand onto the release button.

Danny dropped to the floor, his legs buckling upon impact. Jack pulled the halfa to his feet, pointing to the ghost portal. "The Speeder's just inside the Ghost Zone," he said. "No matter what happens, I want you to get out of here."

The teen shook his head. "No," he insisted, "we all get out of this together."

Vlad had phased through Maddie's grasp, shooting an ectoblast point blank into her unprotected gut. The huntress crumbled, clutching at the spot with a cry.

"Go!" Jack begged, pushing Danny towards the portal. The boy stumbled, colliding with the gun's tripod and going down again, his ectoplasmic skeleton of an arm tangled in the tripod's legs. The gun skidded across the steel floor, coming to rest across the room.

Vlad moved in a flash of light, hands curling around the human's throat and slamming him back against the wall. Jack spluttered, grasping at those vicious fingers as they began to glow red. He looked his oldest friend in those murderous red eyes, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that this time, there was no escape.

Those fingers began to crackle with energy, and Vlad smirked. "Goodbye, Jack."

Three seconds.

Two.

One.

The gun fired, its brilliant white beam illuminating the wall just to their left with a smell like burning hair. With herculean effort, Jack buried his feet in his attacker's stomach. The unexpected blow sent the halfa off balance, just enough to widen his stance…

Vlad's foot slid into the beam's path.

Red eyes grew impossibly wide, the halfa letting out a horrific scream as white lightning buzzed across his body. The bolts of power passed into Jack harmlessly, and Vlad dropped to his hands and knees. Jack collapsed on top of him, trapping the billionaire in that horrible stream of light.

Vlad howled like an animal, writhing as the colour began to seep from his hair and skin, ghost form dissipating like mist beneath the sun. " _Help!_ "

Danny was on his feet in a flash, shooting a continuous stream of energy at the gun. It glowed red and then white before exploding, shrapnel clattering harmlessly against the ghost boy's ectoshield.

Squashed beneath Jack, a certain billionaire whimpered. Smoke coiled lazily from the man's singed business suit and silver hair, and Vlad tremored as the final charges played along his skin before sinking beneath it.

Jack finally managed to roll onto the floor, still struggling to catch his breath after the latest attack to his person. Vlad simply lay where he had fallen, fists slowly opening and closing as his breathing hitched in a sob. A spark appeared between his fingers before winking out, and the man moaned. "No," he breathed.

The smell of burning ectoplasm was heavy in the air, and Jack remembered with a sickening jolt what the gun did.

Danny was there in an instant, crouching at the trembling man's side. "Vlad? Come on, Vlad, you have to get up!"

"Leave."

The billionaire's voice was hollow, broken. Jack should have been satisfied, but the only thing he could register was mounting horror. This had not been part of the plan…

Danny shook his head. "No way."

"I thought that you wanted to go. Take your chance, boy."

The halfa sniffed, blinking rapidly as though he was trying to hold back tears. "Vlad-"

"Go home with your father!" the man roared, curling tighter into himself so as to hide his face. "You deserve each other."

Danny tilted his head heavenward as tears spilled down his cheeks, and Jack frowned. They had won. The would-be murderer was lying helpless on the floor. Shouldn't the boy be happy, or at least ready to get the hell out of there before Vlad regained his composure?

"No, Vlad. You and me, we're the ones who deserve each other," Danny said through lips salty with tears. "We're the first and last to be made by the raw power of the Ghost Zone, remember? I'll always be here for you, maybe not how you want it, but how you need it."

Those words were like a knife of betrayal between Jack's ribs. Of course, Maddie and Danny had both hinted at a truce that Phantom and Plasmius had enjoyed for a significant amount of time, but that was before Jack knew who Vlad was. It had been so easy at the barn to forget all about the connection that those two must have developed, and to view the vengeful halfa as nothing more than a vicious criminal.

The man huddled on the floor was definitely not the same man from the barn, and Jack wondered if he and Vlad were really so different. After all, they were both men who had embraced obsessions that did nothing but harm the ones they cared for.

Maddie had managed to stand, but kept her hands pressed against the spot where Vlad had shot her. Through her fingers Jack could glimpse burned cloth and mutilated flesh slick with blood and ectoplasm. For a moment, superimposed over her form, was Phantom – a memory from a hunt that Jack had led many years ago. The ghost kid was hugging his stomach, face glistening with perspiration and panic as he tried to form a shield for protection against the orange-clad hunter's relentless attacks. Another breath, and the vision was gone.

Jack Fenton and Vladimir Masters were not different at all. In fact, they were mirror images of each other, linked by obsession and a woman. Sitting on Vlad's floor, Jack finally realised that each, in their own way, had managed to ruin everything.

Danny was reaching for the man in front of him, whispering Vlad's name.

Jack blinked, finally realising exactly what was going on. This was the reason they were all still here – from the disaster at the bank, to the nightmare at the barn, and now crouched in a gleaming subterranean basement, Danny had always managed to save them. All the boy ever did was give of himself, cutting away little pieces and grafting these fragments into others in order to make them whole again.

Every single time, he gave all that he could, never asking for anything in return. Gifting them with his heart, his selfless, precious heart.

Finally, Jack understood.

Danny's hand closed over Vlad's shoulder, and the older man uncurled, whipping an ectogun from within his jacket. "I said _leave!_ "

The teen drew back, his good hand raised in a placating gesture. Perhaps Jack finally understood, but it was obvious that Vlad still had no clue how much they all relied on this extraordinary ghost child. One glance at the man's wild expression was all the persuasion that any Fenton needed to obey their host's wishes.

"Alright," Danny said in a voice that was far gentler than anybody expected. He stood, grasping Jack's shoulder to steady himself on unsure feet. "I'll be back tomorrow," he promised.

Vlad held the gun steady, blinking through his own tears to glare at the retreating family. "Get. Out."

Jack nodded, leading his wife and son in the direction of the portal. Its swirling surface of yellows and greens was suddenly far more welcoming than the cold, blood-streaked laboratory, and Jack almost sighed in relief as they passed into the Ghost Zone.

They had barely made it to the Speeder before the portal exploded in a burst of flaming energy. As the heat washed over them in an exhilarating burst, Jack knew that Danny wouldn't be visiting tomorrow, or ever again.

Maddie ushered her husband and son into the vehicle and Jack moaned as he settled into the drivers' seat, a plethora of aches and pains making themselves known all at once.

It was finished. Finally, blessedly, they were safe. Now all Jack wanted to do was curl up in his nice, warm bed and sleep for the rest of the week. No more secrets. No more lies. No more hunting teenage halfas and tearing their family apart.

It was time for Maddie and Jack Fenton to fix their mistakes.

"Let's go home," he said, putting the Speeder into drive.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is it. The Epilogue. The sequel, if you like. The thing that ties it all up.  
> Enjoy the end, my friends.

… _ **Allow me to remark**_

_**That ghosts have just as good a right,** _

_**In every way, to fear the light,** _

_**As men to fear the dark.** _

_**-Lewis Carroll** _

_**.** _

Firelight painted wisps of shadow across the walls and shelves of the library, backlighting a figure that dripped rainwater onto the lovely Persian rug. Even with his face thrown into sharp shadows by the slowly dying fire in the hearth, that ragged haircut that had always been done at home with the kitchen scissors was unmistakeable.

Vlad stared as this uninvited guest placed a couple of bags on the floor. "How the hell did you get past the shield?" he demanded.

Danny shrugged noncommittally, phasing himself dry. Water pooled onto the surface of the rug, a dark stain seeping away from the younger man in all directions. "I always could," he said. "Y'know, teleportation."

The impromptu host curled his fingers around the arms of his chair, desperately forcing himself to ignore the aroma of Chinese food that wafted from one of the bags. "I set it up to keep _you_ out," he growled.

Danny kicked off his shoes and crouched down, rummaging through the shopping bags. "I'm done, Vlad. It's enough." He produced two cardboard cartons from the depths of a bag, handing one to Vlad along with a set of disposable chopsticks. Vlad accepted the food silently, swallowing drily as the warmth of the box's contents seeped into his hands.

Setting his own carton on the floor, Danny pulled out a bottle of dark glass that reflected the spluttering flames. "I wasn't really sure what to get since Dad's never been one to drink fancy wines or anything," he said, "but I remember that you seemed to really like the red stuff."

Vlad watched unblinkingly as Danny produced a corkscrew and proceeded to uncork the bottle. After a few experimental twists, his head slumped and the young man held out the beverage. "Here," he grumbled, "you open it."

The crippled halfa reached forwards, tenderly removing the bottle from his guest's grasp. The label was from a company that he didn't recognise, and a pang of loss twisted in his chest as Vlad wondered how many things had changed during his time cooped up in this mouldering mansion. It had been many years since his basement cabinets of liquor had been depleted, and the familiar weight of the bottle was almost enough to break his resolve then and there.

It would not do to give in. Not after so long.

The truth was that the outside world had no need for Vladimir Masters, and he in turn tried to tell himself that he had no need for the outside world. He had been doing such a good job of it as well, until Daniel materialised like the ghost of Christmas Past with food and drink that made Vlad's chicken coop and vegetable patch entirely lose their appeal as sources of food.

With a few careful twists of his wrist, Vlad popped the cork from the neck of the bottle.

"Wine's not particularly pleasant when warm," he said as nonchalantly as the situation would allow, passing the beverage back to his unusual guest.

Danny drew two wineglasses out of one of the bags. They were entirely the wrong shape – delicate and fluted for champagne instead of the round, bell-like containers better suited to what the two men were to partake of. Still, Danny had certainly made an effort, and Vlad found himself smiling as they were filled to just below the brim. The man on the floor placed a fingertip against the side of a glass and sent a pulse of blue light rippling through its contents before handing the suddenly-chilled drink to his host.

Vlad settled back into his armchair, motioning for the younger man to take the seat beside him. Danny did so, holding out his glass. "Here's to your quarter-century of moping," he proclaimed. "May the next twenty-five years be better for both of us."

Vlad inclined his head and took a sip of his own drink, suppressing a shiver of delight as the half-forgotten taste and aroma of a fruity red wine sunk itself into his stunned brain. For a precious moment, the past twenty-five years could have been nothing more than a horrible dream from which he had finally woken.

The snap of Danny breaking apart his disposable chopsticks jolted Vlad back to the present, and the recluse placed his glass on the small table piled with books that sat between their chairs. Unfolding the top of his noodle carton, Vlad snapped apart his own chopsticks, breathing deeply through his nose. It took all of the man's composure to stop himself from upending the container and pouring its contents directly down his gullet; as it was, Vlad's first mouthful was much larger than strictly polite.

Wonderful, spicy, greasy noodles slid down his throat, and Vlad forgot about everything except the food in front of him. Damn that boy, tempting him with his favourite guilty pleasure after so many years of abstinence!

The food was gone in mere moments and Vlad settled back into his chair, relishing the burn of chilli that set his mouth tingling. Danny ate at a slower pace, leaning forwards and staring at the fireplace as he chewed. The dark room was comfortable with warmth, and as the minutes trickled past, sleep became increasingly inviting; the simple pleasures of company and foreign food were exceedingly exhausting after so long alone. Vlad watched the boy through half-lidded eyes, struggling to maintain suspicion as the calorie-rich meal settled heavily in his stomach.

"Why are you here?"

Danny heaved a sigh, dropping his head so that messy bangs fell into his eyes and shadowed his expression. "I've missed you, Vlad," the halfa said, twisting the half-empty flute of wine between his hands.

"But _why?_ " Vlad pressed. "You could have come in here any time you wanted, so why did you sit back until now and leave me alone?"

A tremor passed through Danny's shoulders. "I _didn't_ leave you alone," he said quietly. "I've been paying your electricity bills and whatnot since the day your companies were dissolved. And you already said it yourself – you put up the shield to keep me out, and I'd wager that that's why you blew up your portal as well."

Vlad didn't dignify those assumptions – no matter how true they may be – with any sort of response. Sitting in silence, he waved his empty glass towards his guest. Vlad was still far too sober for this conversation, the evening far too young and his thoughts far too guarded. Danny dutifully poured another generous drink, chilling the beverage before returning it to him.

They sat together as the flames finally died, leaving the room illuminated by naught but glowing embers. Once, arched windows set high in every wall would have provided ample opportunity for moonlight to reach fingers across the dusty bookshelves, but after Vlad's outburst on that horrible day, he had broken any window in the mansion that remained intact and boarded up every single one. He told himself that it was better that way – the sheets of gyprock were a far kinder option than panes of glass that showcased a world sliding ever onwards and slowly leaving Vlad behind.

Eventually, Danny tired of the silence.

"I'm staying here," he said. When Vlad still made no further move than to sip some more wine, the halfa licked his lips and continued. "Enough is enough, and there are some things I want to do. Just… not tonight." He stood, arching broad shoulders back until something audibly clicked. Vlad watched with a mixture of fascination and pity – the boy's body was still that of somebody in his early twenties, the passage of time halted when his core hit maturity. It had been bad enough observing the changes (or lack thereof) in his own human body over the decades, but seeing this echoed in the boy before him brought about a new, exquisite level of pain.

How cruel a thing fate was. Most men desperately struggled to avoid theirs, postponing the inevitable end of their mortal existences for as long as possible.

Humans are programmed to die.

Halfas, on the other hand…

Vlad carefully set his glass back on the table before it could shatter in his tightening grasp.

Danny placed the near-empty bottle of wine next to it. "I've brought a sleeping bag," he said, "so I think I'll go grab a shower and settle down for the night." He faltered, running a hand through that ridiculous mop of hair with a strangled noise. "Look," he sighed, hunkering down beside the fireplace and throwing a couple of split logs onto the embers, "I really… Um, I'll get this burning again for you."

Danny jabbed at the smouldering logs with a poker, flipping them amongst the embers with a flurry of sparks. They still didn't catch, and the halfa swore lowly before engulfing the end of one with a stream of emerald flame that burst from his fingertip. Several long seconds passed before the flow of energy halted, leaving the wood well on its way to sustaining its own fire.

What a wonderful thing it was to have a core that actually functioned, Vlad mused.

The tip of the log had blackened, a little flame slowly starting to spread. Danny nodded in satisfaction and straightened up, hoisting a duffel bag that undoubtedly contained his aforementioned sleeping bag off the floor.

"Well, I guess I'll see you in the morning." He sent Vlad a look that brooked no argument. "Just so we're clear, if you decide to make a break for it, you won't get far before I drag your sorry butt back here."

Vlad still didn't move or respond in any way as his guest stood there – some small part of him glowed with satisfaction at Daniel's exasperation as the boy gave up waiting, sighed, and stalked out of the room.

Reclaiming his glass, Vlad sipped leisurely at the liquid within as the logs in the fireplace slowly turned to ash.

.:.

It takes almost six months for his wounds to heal after the portal explosion. Vlad keeps himself wrapped in a thick layer of bandages and self-pity as the world turns around him, and doesn't dare look at his reflection for fear of the mutilated face he knows will be staring right back at him. In order to ensure this restriction, he smashes every window and mirror, filling the gaping holes left behind with gyprock ordered from the local hardware store. The work is difficult and aggravates his injuries, but Vlad is grateful for the distraction that it provides. It's the first time that he has ever turned his stereo system louder than a quarter of its capacity, but Vlad decides that he needs something played at full blast that is a bit more mind-numbing than the usual operas.

He purchases as many different albums as he possibly can on iTunes without crashing the program, slowly working through them and figuring out which bands help numb his pain the most effectively. It turns out that the Dumpty Humpty crew that Daniel is so fond of does the job spectacularly well, as do others who speak of death and decaying in darkness, the vocal artists in equal parts crooning and screaming. The sound is overpowering with the volume up loud, the bass reverberating through the walls and floor as Vlad steadily works to block out any way for sunlight to enter his home. The overwhelming sound somehow pushes away all thoughts of _before,_ leaving only the comforting darkness of _now_ and _tomorrow_ and _forevermore._

He is surprised when the electricity and water companies do not shut off the castle's facilities. The internet remains at its usual speed with unlimited downloads, and a couple of gas guys even have the audacity to swing by and refill his heating system when the months begin to cool! Vlad is fixing a hole in the outer tiling of the roof one blustery afternoon when their van parks on the kerb. He retreats indoors before they see him, but turns off the shield so that they can access the outdoor system without having to walk through its unnerving green surface. He prefers fires over turning on the ducted heating, but hasn't had the strength to cut any wood over the past months, so is begrudgingly grateful to whoever thought to send them.

When the men slide some maintenance instructions under the door and take their leave, Vlad decides to turn on the pilot light. He fiddles with the shield until it is restored to a shimmering green dome around the property, and once he's sure that he is alone, he steps out the front door.

Daniel was there. Perhaps he still is.

Vlad stares at the carefully arranged pile of gardening clothing, utensils, and seeds for every vegetable imaginable that sits on the front steps. The boy has also left a miniature portal with ectofilter attached – it is so small that not even a finger could pass through the hole that the portal will tear through dimensions, but the attached filter is more than enough for Vlad to realise its purpose.

With this, he can collect ectoplasm.

Perhaps his core may be useless, but it still settles deep within his body, beating with an ache so intense that it sometimes feels like he'll tear apart if he doesn't binge drink until passing out. Consuming ectoplasm would fix that torment, and would hopefully heal his horrendously burned flesh as well.

Vlad fixes his pilot light and moves everything inside before scanning the premises with a spectral detector powerful enough to identify even a halfa in human form. Its radar returns with a single small blip indicative of his own crippled core, and Vlad sighs.

The boy is gone.

He is alone again, but Vlad can't decide which emotion is greater: anguish, or relief?

The delivery has obviously been personal, with a note attached in the teen's familiar scrawl that promises a delivery of chickens in the spring; apparently he has to convince his parents that Vlad will actually take care of the animals before the all-clear is given. In addition, bills and groceries will be taken care of, the latter delivered every Monday afternoon and left by the mailbox. Any requests for specific items should be left in an envelope taped to the exterior of said box.

Vlad turns on the heater and sets the gardening equipment just inside the front door. He takes the ectoplasm-collecting device to the kitchen, setting it beside the coffee maker and flipping the on switch.

It lights up with an achingly familiar green-and-yellow swirl, and Vlad staggers, clutching himself as his core twists and knots within him. He ends up lying on the floor, curled up and trembling as that ruined vessel of power writhes around his organs. The pain is exquisite, and Vlad howls, thrashing on the freezing tiles as his heart beats a rapid SOS against his sternum.

He wants it to stop, please just _stop hurting_ he can't take it anymore and damn how could he have ever considered doing this to the boy?

His cries quiet as his core eventually settles back into its proper position and Vlad finally sits up, wiping snot and tears from his face with the sleeve of the jumper that he has been wearing for at least a week.

Standing up, he forces himself to glare at the miniature portal that hums innocently in its casing. A few drops of ectoplasm have begun to squeeze through the filter and into its containment unit, and Vlad has to grip the edges of the bench as hard as he can as he forces his core to _wait_ , because a couple of meagre drops will only make this inner fire burn hotter.

He decides to get clean. A hot shower will pass the time until a glassful can be produced, and it's high time to change his clothing anyway. As Vlad passes through his empty mansion the back of his neck tickles, and he has to remind himself that he is _alone_ ; Daniel could not have fooled the scanner, and is long gone by now. Nothing with a core can get through the shield, either.

That cold spot on the staircase is just his imagination.

.:.

Vlad's personal quarters boasted several adjoining rooms outfitted in shades of green and cream. Complete with hundreds of books, a computer, and a lavish bathroom large enough to contain a fully functional minibar and three terraces of spa baths, the recluse did not have to leave these rooms unless he wished to. Indeed, he had whiled away years at a time cooped up inside, venturing downstairs or outside only to tend to his plants and animals and to collect the shopping when it was dropped off.

The crippled halfa had left the library during the stillness of the witching hour, retreating to these quarters in order to draw a hot bath. The spa on the uppermost terrace was the smallest, and the most practical for a one-man soak. Vlad programmed the faucet to the perfect temperature by tapping a panel set into the wall, and frothing water tinted green with mineral salts thundered into the tub.

Disrobing, he stepped into the spa with a moan of appreciation. Something about a hot, fragrant bath always soothed Vlad, temporarily rinsing away the pain of wasted, lonely decades. Although the smallest of his tubs, this was large enough for the man to float spread-eagled on his back with hands and feet still at least a ruler's length from the edges.

Once upon a time, people had been entertained in this bathroom. Six or seven guests at once would climb into each of the three spas, sipping from glasses of sparkling liquid as others still danced out in the adjoining bedroom that had originally been built as a dancefloor. Once, back when Vlad had been a teenager and his parents rich in their own right, he had thrown wild parties and spent all of his free time with Jack Fenton and other friends and his social life actually resembled something that was relatively normal. Of course, that was before the accident. It seemed like everything in his life could be mapped out with the accident as a dividing barrier; before, there were parties and laughter and friendships, but as soon as he got hit by that proto-portal, all of that had snuffed out to be replaced by things that were far less fulfilling.

The contrast brought a chuckle to his lips even as something hollow twisted beneath his sternum, and Vlad leaned back, submerging his head along with the rest of his body. Everything fell away, leaving nothing but a cocoon of warmth and a thundering pressure against Vlad's ears as the tap continued to pour. Here, surrounded by hot water and steam and the bathroom's bright halogen lights, everything seemed a lot better than it actually was. If he could just lose himself in the sensation, maybe Vlad could forget for a minute all about his loneliness and the constant ache in his crippled core and the uninvited guest sleeping down the hall.

He stayed in the tub until his mind went blank, drawing more hot water whenever the bath began to cool. It was soothing to lie in the still warmth, the mineral salts fragrant and relaxing. Eventually, Vlad dozed off with his head resting against the edge and the water lapping at his collarbone.

He woke in a cold bath to a smell that should be familiar but remained just outside his recognition.

Climbing stiffly out of the water and pulling the plug, Vlad wrapped himself in a soft white towel and padded through the bedroom to his massive wardrobe. Large enough to fit a car if he so wished, the walls were lined with all of the clothing that Vlad was fond of wearing. He took a lazy tour of the hanging garments, running his fingers over them until finally settling on a button-up shirt, woollen slacks, and a soft knitted jumper. Once dressed, Vlad appraised himself in a floor-to-ceiling mirror; the outfit was casual enough for a day spent indoors, but still formal to a level far beyond what Danny would be wearing. It wouldn't do to appear too casual when the younger man's intentions were still unknown, although Vlad could wager that the other was most likely here to convince him to re-enter society or some such nonsense.

Well, he'd just have to nip that idea in the bud.

Stretching his hands towards the ceiling, Vlad groaned as his spine smarted. Spending hours asleep in the bathtub hadn't exactly done wonders for his muscles, and he briefly entertained the thought of convincing Danny to give him a massage. Out of all of the things that he had given up to become a hermit, shiatsu massages were one of the things that Vlad missed desperately. Still, there would be no point in requesting such treatment from his guest – Danny would likely have no clue how to administer what Vlad wanted, and both would come away from the experience with no small level of frustration.

What _was_ that smell?

Vlad ventured down the stairs, trying not to inhale too deeply. His chest ached with longing at the scent, maddening in its tantalising familiarity. He entered the kitchen, crumbling into a chair at the already-set table at the sight of Danny frying tomatoes, eggs, sausages, and bacon.

The younger man grinned, flipping one of the tomatoes and sprinkling it with a fresh layer of dried herbs. "Morning," he greeted, pouring a glass of ectoplasm and placing it on the table in front of his host.

Vlad took a gulp of his drink and finally managed to get his tongue back in working order, trying to ignore that wonderful sizzling that sent his salivary glands into overdrive. "I didn't know that you could cook," he blurted.

Danny shrugged. "Well, both Mum and Dad are awful at it, so I actually learned from Tucker during the summer after high school." He smiled into the frypan. "I figured that if I'm gunna live forever, I may as well eat some good food. You sort of taught me that, remember?"

"I thought you weren't overly fond of the caviar I gave you," Vlad said between sips. Over the years, his daily meals had become more habit than pleasure, and the man simply ate similar food every day, easy to prepare and clean up from. After all, he decided that it took far too much effort to cook a gourmet meal when he was the only one eating.

This elicited a chuckle from the cook. "Yeah," he said, "that stuff sucks, but you got me thinking that maybe it'd be a good idea to try foods from all over the world. Everything new that I liked, I learned how to cook. I could even make you a traditional Indian feast for dinner tonight if you'd like!"

Vlad felt as though he was going to explode of happiness right there at his kitchen table. Unbidden, the echo of a taste sprang to his tongue, the phantom spices making his mouth water in anticipation.

He had owned a high-end Indian restaurant before the incident with the gun, along with lavish Italian and Vietnamese places located in Paris. Food had been his only true pleasure, and Vlad had taken great care over the years to collect and modify as many recipes as he could.

Of course, all of that had changed after he retreated to an isolated life inside this crumbling castle. Over the last quarter of a century, Vlad had no doubt that his restaurants had followed in similar footsteps to his companies; liquidated once blackmailing the competition became too difficult, or passed from ownership to ownership until the resulting businesses were naught but shadows of their former glory. He didn't know for certain, as he avoided any news online apart from world headlines, but Vlad was certain that should he decide to venture back out into society, he would have to start again from scratch. It was not an appealing option.

As his companies supposedly withered and eventually died, Vlad had remained indoors, living off basic groceries, his vegetable garden, and a coop full of chooks. Simple foods helped him to forget about everything that he had lost, so Vlad never bothered to request so much as a jar of laksa from whoever delivered the shopping.

It was simpler that way, and slowly, the ache had become easier to ignore.

Danny placed a heaped plate of food in the middle of the small kitchen table, seating himself across from Vlad. Serving himself a generous plateful, the young man dug into his meal with obvious relish.

Vlad stared at the gently steaming food. He swallowed in anticipation, transferring a piece of toast and one of each food item onto his own plate. Salt and pepper were applied slowly, Vlad shooting glances at his guest. Danny continued to shove food into his mouth, oblivious to the internal struggle of the man sitting across from him.

Vlad wanted so badly to eat the food. Just one bite, and he was certain that he would eat everything that Danny didn't. It had been so long, _too long,_ since he had eaten anything so spectacular, and food had always been one of Vlad's greatest pleasures.

But what was Danny getting out of this?

Why was he here?

What the hell did he expect Vlad to do?

Just because he waltzed in here with wine and takeaway and a gorgeous breakfast meant nothing. This didn't make Vlad indebted to Danny in any way.

For a moment a thought prodded at Vlad's mind, sending him the image of a very different ghost boy sitting in front of him. A Daniel whose core had been stripped of all power back down in the lab was hunched over the table, staring glassily at the gourmet food. His hands rested on the tablecloth, clenching and unclenching as though trying to summon even the wisp of an ectoblast. He was thin, sickly pale, eyes lifeless and defeated.

Vlad would have done anything to make those eyes sparkle again.

Wrenching his thoughts away from that awful possibility, Vlad sighed. Throughout his isolation, he had realised that had Danny been shot with that gun, the boy would have died inside. And the more Vlad thought about it, the more he realised that he was somewhat thankful that it had been him rather than the boy.

Danny would always come to rescue Vlad, but Vlad didn't think that he would have been able to rescue Danny had their positions been reversed.

Finally picking up his knife and fork, Vlad cut a piece off his bacon, chewing it deliberately slowly so as to prolong the sweet relief of eating something other than cereal for breakfast. Between bites, he contemplated that maybe it _was_ time for Danny to save him.

Whatever the reason for the younger man's unexpected visit, Vlad was glad – he had been getting tired of being alone.

.:.

The first time it snows, Vlad locks himself in the kitchen. He has moved the chickens into the adjoining laundry, packing this temporary coop with extra straw and some old blankets that probably should have been thrown out years ago. He keeps the fire in the woodfire pizza oven constantly burning, replacing the table with a futon from upstairs draped with several thick quilts.

It's overkill, Vlad knows, but he can't stand the snow. Back when his core actually functioned, such weather had been simply infuriating. Now, the sparkling white flakes drag one person in particular to the forefront of Vlad's mind, and all he can do is think about how this is Daniel's favourite weather and how before their truce had fallen apart, the boy filled Vlad's garden with ice statues during a heat wave that took days to melt.

He would take refuge from the cold in a hot bath if not for the memory of when Daniel had agreed to take a dip with Vlad; the younger halfa had managed to accidentally freeze the water, trapping them inside a block of ice that made Vlad's core ache for weeks.

The bath is entirely out of the question, thank you very much. Instead, Vlad huddles in the kitchen, leaving its warmth only to let the chickens into the courtyard during fine daytime weather for an hour or so at a time.

The groceries still come every week, but instead of being left out at the mailbox, they are delivered on the doorstep, sheltered from drifts of snow by the recessed front door. Vlad is thankful, and even goes so far as to turn off the intimidating ghost shield every Monday and shovel the driveway to make access easier for the delivery boy.

Occasionally, he finds steaming apple pies or hot fudge brownies in a basket when he lets the chooks out. Vlad takes the gifts without comment, retreating to the kitchen to savour these treats away from the bright, cold snow.

If Daniel stays to watch, he doesn't make his presence known. Vlad always turns the shield back on after the groceries have been delivered, and scans the castle for spectral intruders. The radar never shows the boy, and Vlad constantly finds himself torn between grief and fury. How dare Daniel simply waltz in and deliver pies as though nothing has changed since they were… dare he think it? …friends?

He eats the food and tries to forget where it came from. When one day there is a delicate gingerbread house covered in lacy patterns of white icing and bright chocolate buttons, he throws it into the fire. The kitchen stinks of burnt gingerbread for a couple of days, and Vlad eventually relents, opening the doors to air out the room and retreating to a fragrant bath in the hope of washing the smell from his skin and hair.

When Vlad emerges from his vigorous scrubbing, he finds a box wrapped in red and topped with a green bow. For a moment he debates throwing the whole thing back into the snow, but his fingers have already torn away the wrapping before he can fully make the decision. Inside is a Christmas card and a gorgeously soft mink blanket. Vlad burns Daniel's card without bothering to read it, but keeps the blanket.

Inside the kitchen it is warm and dark, and Vlad shuts all the doors again; in here, he will wrap himself in his fluffy new blanket and sleep and read and while away the winter.

.:.

It took over a week for Danny to convince Vlad to leave the castle grounds. They ventured out into the winter cold on foot, the recluse bundled up in enough winter clothing to make his companion laugh uproariously. It was so good to hear that laugh after so many years that Vlad didn't even mind Danny's teasing.

The two immortals strolled into town, Vlad in too many layers of clothing and Danny in too few. It had yet to snow this season, but dark clouds crouched on the horizon and a bitter wind whipped at Vlad's coats and scarf. Leaves swirled across the pavement as a bright, brittle vestige of autumn, and people hurried to and fro, bundled into their own coats and scarves.

The shop windows were trimmed with tinsel and blinking lights, half-forgotten and achingly familiar music wafting through the air whenever a door opened. Danny led Vlad through the middle of the shopping mall, passing dozens of shopfronts.

Vlad recognised nothing beyond the lights and sounds. In a quarter of a century, this local strip of shops had changed so much that he doubted that any of the stores he had once frequented were still in business.

He had go back home right now and never come outside again.

The press of unfamiliar crowds in a place that had changed so drastically it wasn't even his hometown anymore sent Vlad's heart fluttering. It was loud and claustrophobic, too much too soon after a quarter-century of solitude in the vast, open spaces of a crumbling castle. Everywhere he looked just made the panic worse, and Vlad had stopped following Danny and was now breathing heavily and folded into a corner with a couple of bike racks in a desperate attempt to pull away from the source of his distress. His back pressed flat against the wall, eyes darting from shopfront to shopfront in the hope of finding something, _anything_ familiar to anchor himself.

His gaze met the restaurant's sign, and something within the man crumbled. That was it, the first business he had ever owned, inherited from Vlad's own father – it was still there, staring at him from across the mall as though gazing through the abyss of time. That damned Indian restaurant that had started Vlad's business career. The longer he looked at its familiar façade, the worse his stomach churned.

Just as Vlad felt like he was going to throw up there on the cobblestones, Danny's head popped around the corner. "There you are!" he exclaimed, hair windswept and cheeks whipped rosy red by the cold. "I was worried… Vlad, are you okay?"

The man took a deep breath, holding it for five seconds before breathing out again. "I'm fine," he snapped, trying his hardest not to look at the restaurant.

"You're shaking!"

"It's freezing," the man retorted. "Now is there a reason you brought me out here in the cold, or are we just having a leisurely wander while I freeze to death?"

Danny grinned. "Yeah, you're gunna love it. Come on!"

This time, the ghost boy held loosely onto the end of Vlad's scarf as he jumped back into the throng of Christmas shoppers. It wasn't really much of a choice for Vlad – either follow willingly, or be strangled by the scarf.

They ducked around the corner into a little café, and Vlad's eyes widened at the long line and shortage of available seats. Before he could ask Danny why they were in such a small, crowded space, a staff member with a manager's badge bustled across the busy room, smoothing her uniform and planting herself in front of the two men.

Danny sent her one of his winning smiles. "Hi, Sasha," he said.

The somewhat dumpy woman smiled back, and Vlad found himself relaxing slightly at the warmth that she exuded. "Mr Fenton, I wasn't aware that you were in town!"

The ghost boy waved an airy hand. "Sorry if I startled you, but I'm not here to bother you. My friend and I were in the neighbourhood and decided to come and get something to warm up."

Sasha bobbed her head, eyes flitting to Vlad before returning to Danny. "Of course! I'll get you two the next available table," she promised.

"There's no rush," Danny assured her, motioning to the counter. "You all keep doing your thing like I'm not even here, and we'll just wait."

Bobbing her head again, Sasha mumbled a quick thank you before rushing back to her duties, speaking quietly to other staff members as they passed by her.

Danny joined the queue, still not releasing the end of Vlad's scarf.

"I thought that you were a teacher at Casper High," he said quietly.

The young man nodded, his gaze moving slowly around the café. "Yeah, I am."

"She was pretty formal."

Danny glanced at his companion as though trying to gauge what exactly Vlad was trying to say. He rubbed the tassels of the older man's scarf between his fingers silently before finally dropping the fabric, moving to rub at the back of his neck instead. "I come here a bit," he confessed.

Vlad simply looked at him, conveying as much disbelief as he could with a raised eyebrow and tilted head. "From the way she's working right now, I do not believe that Sasha is the type of woman to be so formal with regular customers. The rest of the staff seem unsettled as well."

Danny gave a breathless laugh. "Well, I'll explain later, okay?"

Vlad grumbled inwardly but allowed the subject to drop.

A wooden advent calendar consisting of numbered cubes sat on the counter, and Vlad watched in fascination as a child aimlessly flipped the numbers around as his mother paid for their order. Upon noticing the behaviour of her offspring, the woman apologised to the slight girl serving her before placing the numbers back into their correct positions.

Thirteen days until Christmas.

If Danny didn't seem so insistent on this little coffee break, Vlad would have dragged the ghost boy back to his mansion as fast as possible. The carols playing from the radio grated against the recluse's nerves like sandpaper, and Vlad made sure to stand on the side of Danny that was furthest from a miniature Christmas tree that was set up in one corner. The combined cheer and companionship that filled the little café was rather overwhelming, and Vlad found himself nibbling at his lower lip and shooting increasingly frequent glances at the slightly-less-crowded and open-to-the-sky spaces outside.

The woman with the little boy finally finished collecting her order, and the line inched closer to the counter.

As they passed Danny and Vlad, the boy stopped, bouncing in excitement and staring at the former as though confronted with somebody as wonderful as Santa Claus.

"Phantom," he said in awe, resisting when his mother tried to pull him towards the door.

Vlad stared as Danny knelt beside the kid. "Hi, buddy," he said, holding out a hand for the child to shake.

Foregoing the handshake entirely, the boy tackled Danny in a massive hug. "Phantom!" he shrieked amidst giggles. "Mummy, it's Danny Phantom!"

Danny laughed, ruffling the boy's hair affectionately before agreeing to sign an autograph on his t-shirt.

Vlad stood in the middle of the crowded, noisy café, staring at Danny like it was the first time he had ever seen the boy.

How the hell could he have missed Daniel's secret being revealed? Sure, Vlad had generally avoided the local and business news articles, but he still made sure to read the world news every six months or so! He had figured that skimming over the main changes worldwide on a bi-annual basis would be enough to keep up with everything major without giving himself the opportunity to convince himself to re-join society, but it looked like something of far greater impact to Vlad than the current ocean levels or the latest progression of politics had slipped completely under the radar.

For a moment everything that had transpired over the last quarter-century fell away, leaving Vlad with one simple truth: The world knew Danny's secret, and Vlad hadn't been there to help the boy when he needed it.

Once the child had left, beaming and promising to show his shirt to everyone at school, Danny happily signed autographs for a few other people, moving between the tables with the ease of somebody born to the spotlight. He paused to speak to some of the other customers who Vlad could only guess were regulars that Danny had met before, enquiring about their children and grandchildren and how their businesses were going with such genuine interest that Vlad found himself aching to talk to this open, honest, happy young man instead of the tense, somewhat brooding halfa that had turned up at his castle nine days ago.

Danny finished his circuit of the café just as Vlad reached the counter.

"What may I get for you?" the girl at the register asked, tugging her apron so that it sat straight.

"I'll have my usual," Danny said, and the teen nodded.

"Would you like one of our complimentary gingerbread cookies with your hot chocolate?" she queried, looking at a spot beyond Danny's ear instead of meeting his eyes.

"Why not?" the halfa said before turning to Vlad. "You having that black coffee stuff?"

The man gave a defeated nod, standing to the side as Danny paid and grabbed a number to put on their table. Maybe some coffee would make him feel better, he conceded inwardly as Danny lead the way to a table that had just been vacated.

Outside, the clouds had blotted out all sunlight. They hung heavy and dark over the mall, and Vlad sincerely hoped that Danny would teleport them home.

They settled into their seats, and Vlad removed his two coats and unwound the scarf before daring to look at his companion.

Danny fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt.

_Patience,_ Vlad told himself. Danny would break the silence when he was ready to.

"I didn't mean for anyone to find out," the hero said, beginning to trace a knot in the table's grain with his fingernail. Vlad looked up as soon as he spoke, unsure whether he actually wanted to know what had happened. What if it had been something horrible? What if Vlad's allegiance could have prevented it? "Mum and Dad helped to hunt the ghosts so I could finish school and get my degree, and then they agreed to hunt while I was working at Casper High, and I'd deal with the ghosts early in the morning and during the evening and night. Val helped as well."

He heaved a deep breath, finger moving to a different whorl and gaze never leaving the table. "Well, most of the attacks were new ghosts by then – all the regulars like Skulker and Ember had sort of agreed to leave the town alone so long as I let them visit every now and then to enjoy human things like movies and food. I fight them in Ghost Zone tournaments every few months for a bit of fun, but we're kind of friends now. I still have new enemies showing up all the time, but a lot of them are hotshot idiots who only want to fight me because I'm so well-known in the Ghost Zone. They all know not to hurt anyone though, since I almost ripped apart Walker because he put someone in a wheelchair during an invasion attempt.

"About five years after I started teaching, a ghost attacked the school. It was just another new guy testing my strength, but one of the unspoken rules about fighting me is to never target living people. Anyway, my ghost sense went off near the beginning of class, and a student outside started screaming. I… I sort of lost it, I guess. Transformed then and there and pummelled that stupid ghost into the ground, threatening him within an inch of his afterlife for _daring_ to touch one of my students.

"I sort of had to come clean with the town after that, and then all those superheroes in New York and whatnot called me up for some help with some ghost trouble a few months later. People here and there knew who I was, but it wasn't until one massive superhero and villain fight in Los Angeles that I got completely ousted. Things went a bit wrong, and the world found out when I took a shot for Spider-man and ended up turning human in front of an entire camera crew."

Danny sighed, his fingers finally ceasing their movements across the table. "I thought you would have known, since you have the internet and all," he said, finally looking at Vlad.

Vlad shook his head numbly as Sasha stopped at their table with a mug of coffee for him and a massive hot chocolate complete with a mountain of whipped cream and a couple of gingerbread cookies in the shape of reindeer for Danny. The boy's sweet tooth obviously hadn't diminished over the decades, Vlad noted. After ensuring that the two of them were taken care of, she bustled back to her duties, leaving them alone.

Vlad cradled the cup in his hands, blowing on the rising steam after nearly burning his tongue. The thought of Danny teaming up with S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't at all surprising, nor was the manner of his worldwide revelation. No, what had fury simmering in Vlad's gut was Danny's revelation to Amity Park.

It was an unspoken rule throughout the Ghost Zone that a halfa's secret was their own to tell, and no ghost had ever dared reveal either Phantom of Plasmius. Sure, they would drop as many hints as they could, but the spectres never caused fights that got Danny found out. Something like that would be interfering with the process of the halfa's 'death', and was thus off-limits. Most ghosts wouldn't even _consider_ intervening with the complicated process of dying, since even for a halfa the mental transition was incredibly delicate. If anything took a nasty turn, from the actual death scene to the social impact amongst family and friends, a malevolent ghost usually formed. Halfas were no exception, and while Vlad was living evidence that spectral malevolence can be overcome through time, no ghost wanted to risk somebody as powerful as Phantom becoming evil.

For a ghost to attack the school while Danny was working pretty much broke every rule in the book. If the town had taken the news of Danny's condition poorly, it could have had a serious negative impact on the halfa's psyche, and if the Guys in White had decided to cause trouble… Vlad suppressed a shudder. The thought of an evil Phantom was even worse than the thought of a crippled, broken one.

There was no way that the halfa could have left his classroom during a time of emergency without losing his job if he didn't reveal his secret. For a ghost to know this and still attack the school, targeting an innocent student no less, would have been pretty high on the list of Danny's worst nightmares.

Watching Danny bite the head off one of his cookies, Vlad ground his teeth. "Did someone lock him up?"

"What, the guy who shot me?" Danny asked, dipping the decapitated reindeer into his monstrosity of a drink. "Sort of, since they ended up sending them back to where-"

"The ghost who revealed you in Amity," Vlad clarified, glaring at the table. If his core had still worked, the unfortunate furniture would have most likely burst into flames by now due to the level of Vlad's fury.

The hero shook his head, twirling a finger through the cinnamon-dusted cream. "He got away," he said, "but I'd beaten him up pretty badly. I guess he crawled back to whatever corner of the Ghost Zone he came from. He hasn't had the guts to come back, and if he does, Walker'll imprison him for a few thousand years for interfering with my death."

Vlad took a sip of his coffee, barely even registering its taste thanks to his burned tongue. Outside, it had started to snow heavily, and people were rushing out of the shop to get to their cars before the weather got too bad. Neither halfa moved or spoke until the rush settled again, leaving the shop half-empty.

"I've missed you, Vlad." Danny decapitated another cookie, chewing thoughtfully on the reindeer's head. "It's been… Without you around to stir up trouble and to teach me new things, I've been a bit lonely," he confessed, "and it was really hard to just sit back and watch you shut yourself off in that castle."

"What about your family and friends?" Vlad asked, struggling to keep a bitter note from his voice.

Inside, his heart was singing.

Danny shrugged. "Well, Sam and Tuck and Jazz have all moved on," he said. "They all stayed human and went to uni and got married and are living their dreams. Tucker's actually working with me for S.H.I.E.L.D., and Jazz is some leading expert in psychology, and Sam's off in Italy on her honeymoon, so I guess you could say that they're all doing really well."

Danny took a sip of his drink, leaving space for his companion to comment if he so wished. Vlad stayed quiet, waiting for Danny to continue.

Setting his cup back onto the table, the halfa sighed. "Mum and Dad are going great with their hunting and inventing and whatnot. They like having me around to tinker and help cook and clean, but I don't want to be stuck living with them forever, you know? I want to move on, move out, and find some new adventures and dreams. I might look like I'm not yet twenty-five, but I'm gunna look like this forever, so there's really no point in sitting around and waiting for something to change."

The older man dropped his gaze, heat rushing across his cheeks in shame.

"I've really missed you," Danny repeated, "and I wish you'd come back to Amity Park. We can be friends again."

"I can't just pick up where I left off," Vlad countered. "All my businesses will have been destroyed by now, and… I can't…" His forehead crinkled, and Vlad took another sip of coffee.

Twenty-five years alone had ruined him, and there was no going back to the man he had once been.

"Then why did you leave everything to me in your will?" Danny asked. Vlad's head shot up at that question, and he gaped at the boy. Sure, he had made a will, but for an immortal it had seemed like such a trivial necessity. The creation of such a seemingly-redundant document had been amusing, but some small part of Vlad had once revelled in the thought of forcing Daniel to be his heir. "They called me once they couldn't contact you, and your assistant or secretary or something helped me to get through the whole legal thing. Apparently they put you down as mentally disabled after hitting your head in a ghost fight, and everything was suddenly mine to take care of." Danny gave a bark of a laugh, running a finger around and around and around the rim of his mug like a planet following its orbit. "I was _seventeen._ Why the hell would you give me something like that?"

Vlad's hands were clenched tightly around his empty coffee cup. "What happened?" he asked, trying to keep his voice as level as possible, not really sure whether he should feel terrified, elated, or severely disappointed.

The halfa shrugged. "I couldn't deal with DALV and VLADCO and all those big things," he said, "so your assistant lady and your lawyer helped me to sell them, but I kept all three restaurants. The restaurant employees were more than happy for me to take over from you so long as I let them manage themselves until I turned twenty-one. Then your head chef from the place in Paris sort of turned up on my doorstep one day and insisted I take a world food tour with him over the Summer before he agreed to work for me, so I guess you can thank him for educating me in the culinary delights of the world, and since then I've used some of the revenue from selling your big companies to set up two new restaurants in Paris…" Danny's babbling trailed off as he stared at Vlad. "What?"

Vlad clasped trembling hands in his lap, unable to keep the grin off his face. "Thank you," he said, filling that simple statement with as much feeling as he could.

Danny shrugged, taking another sip of his drink as his cheeks tinged pink. "Yeah, well, I figured you wouldn't really mind. This café's mine as well, by the way. It started to go bankrupt a few years ago, so I bought it and remodelled it after all those quirky little ones in New York City that Tucker likes to show me."

Vlad raised an eyebrow, looking around the shop with new interest. Now that Danny mentioned it, the place was certainly quaint, and its display of cakes beside the counter looked incredible. Just from appearance alone, the man wagered that people all over the city would pay a fortune for such fancy confections.

He looked back at Danny to find the man staring at him expectantly. "Do you like it?"

Vlad smiled as genuinely as he could. "Of course I do," he said, leaning back in the wicker chair with a sudden degree of comfort that had not been there moments ago.

Danny beamed at him before downing the rest of his drink. "Anyway," the halfa said, "how about we get a bit of shopping done? I need to get some warmer clothes and more ingredients for tonight's dinner."

Vlad glanced out the windows at the driving snow. "So long as you phase me through that horrid weather," he responded, pushing the chair back from the table with far greater enthusiasm than he actually had.

Danny was smiling, and even went so far as to hum along with a carol that played in the background as Vlad wrapped himself firmly back into his scarf and several coats.

.:.

Vlad is startled from his dinner by a commotion outdoors. He races over the damp lawn, freezing water making his toes go numb within seconds, as the chickens flutter and scream within their coop. Vlad's heart feels like it's going to hammer its way out of his chest, and he picks up the pace.

He sees the hole in the wire immediately, wrenching the lid off with a strangled curse.

Inside the coop there's a flurry of noise and movement, and the startled fox is back through the hole and streaking across the lawn and into the trees before Vlad can even register what he's looking at. He stares at the spot where it disappeared, mentally fixing it in his mind, before turning to the coop of frightened fowl.

One bird is lying limp and still, eyes as empty and lifeless as blown light bulbs.

That simple sight hits him like a sledgehammer to the sternum, and all of a sudden Vlad's struggling for breath. He lifts her from the coop and gently replaces the lid, sinking to sit in nothing but his pyjamas on the cold ground. Water seeps into the seat of his pants, but Vlad pays it no heed as he cradles the rapidly cooling body against his chest.

"Damn it," he breathes, closing his eyes against the sting of tears.

The movement inside the coop begins to settle, soft clucking occasionally filling the gaps between Vlad's violent sobbing. He rocks backwards and forwards, holding the dead hen tightly as the stars begin to turn.

Why did Vlad ever think that he could be responsible for life? The corpse in his arms is simple proof that he destroys everything he cares about, and the man howls his grief to the sky. He does this to everybody – Jack, Maddie, _Daniel…_ Everybody he has ever cared for, driven away by Vlad's own hand. He has only ever wanted their company, their loyalty, their love, but Vladimir Masters has always lost what he cares about most.

Over the decades, he has often entertained various fantasies, indulging in what could have been. Daniel and Madeline at his side, loving and caring and a family. Now, with the lifeless body of a creature that had been entrusted to his care clasped against his chest, Vlad wonders what things would be like if he had succeeded.

All he sees is Daniel, powerless and broken. The boy barely leaves his room, preferring to sleep away the days and months and years as depression slowly gnaws at his crippled interior. The child has nothing to live for in that situation, but is kept from death by his immortal body.

Unresponsive, quiet, withdrawn.

This Daniel is more of a ghost than he ever was as Phantom.

The mere thought of this future, one that had come so close to being a reality, sends shudders through Vlad's frame that have nothing to do with the cold. Grief and shame coalesce in the man's chest, a heavy weight that makes him gasp for air between sobs.

Despite yearning for Daniel's affection, Vlad has never even bothered with the common courtesy of using boy's preferred nickname.

Contrary to what Danny had said that night in the lab, Vlad doesn't deserve him. Vlad doesn't deserve anyone. He can't even take care of a bunch of chickens, for goodness' sake! Whether he wants it or not, Vlad is the boy's villain, and he sits and stares at the moon and wonders if things could have been different.

Vlad's muscles are every bit as stiff and cold as the corpse in his arms when he finally moves.

The first thing he does is fix the hole in the coop, reinforcing the entire enclosure with a double layer of chicken wire. He digs a grave in the rose garden as the sun rises and sits by the hole for hours and hours, clutching the cloth-wrapped corpse and trying to stop the tears.

She was a good hen, he reminds himself. She's had a good life, roaming his garden with the others, scratching at the lawn and growing fat on feed.

Everybody deserves to have a good life.

Vlad has to stop several times during the process of filling in the hole, waiting for his tears to slow enough for him to see clearly again.

The Fentons deserve good lives. Just because Vlad has destroyed his own – how _clearly_ can he see it now! – does not mean that he ever had the right to damage theirs.

With the grave finally filled in, Vlad checks the coop again to ensure that there are no more weak points before heading inside.

Curling up in bed in his muddy, torn pyjamas, Vlad cries his grieving soul to sleep, and dreams of a better him.

.:.

Vlad made up his mind to get to know the strange, confident young man that had seemed so much at ease talking to the patrons of the coffee shop. The recluse helped with the cooking and even went shopping with Danny a couple more times, and when the schoolteacher suggested that they fix the castle's windows and clean up the wings of locked, abandoned rooms, Vlad threw himself into the task wholeheartedly.

If Danny was surprised by this development, he didn't show it.

As Vlad's home was slowly returned to its former glory, the man found himself wondering what the point of the past twenty-five years had been. He had shut Danny out, shut _the world_ out, as though a locked door and flimsy ghost shield could keep his problems at bay. Cleaning and renovating might have been difficult work, but it certainly freed Vlad's mind, giving him far too much time to think as Danny blasted music from the loudspeakers and chatted away about whatever he wanted.

Vlad occasionally contributed to the conversation, but mostly just watched his companion, listening to Danny's comments and anecdotes with intense interest. The emergence of this side of Vlad, the passionate, driven part of his psyche, surprised him at first; he thought it had withered and died while he rotted in depression and solitude. Vlad welcomed its awakening wholeheartedly, reasoning that maybe something of his old life could still be salvaged.

The budding friendship that he had once enjoyed with the boy was returning. During his teens, Danny had been nothing more than an annoyance, useful only in his possible future as Vlad's pupil and ally. However, as the boy grew, Vlad had found himself pulled in the direction of something far more socially acceptable than the whole 'stealing Jack's son and making him his own' thing – for the first time since he had become a halfa, Vlad found himself in the company of a friend.

Of course, that had all been dashed by Vlad's behaviour when Maddie became a halfa. He had realised that years ago, depression pushing him past the point of despair as Vlad contemplated all of the things that he had inadvertently abandoned in his quest for vengeance.

Suicide was only ever attempted a few times during his self-isolation – it was kind of difficult to succeed in killing oneself when said person is immortal. Besides, the clean-up afterwards was a horrendous job, depending on Vlad's chosen method of self-mutilation. Even when he stuck a gun beneath his jaw and blew off the top of his head, Vlad regenerated, and was left with a grisly coating of dried gore to scrub off the bathroom tiles during his next spurt of motivation. There were still marks in the white paint of the ceiling that wouldn't come out, and now had to be painted over.

Vlad's thoughts snapped back to the present as Danny began to mix a freshly-opened can of paint. "You couldn't think of a more creative colour than Eggshell White?" the younger man scoffed.

Vlad pulled the drop sheet so that it reached all the way to the wall. "When you have your own home, _you_ can choose the paint colour, and I won't complain."

Danny rolled his eyes, setting aside the mixing tool and pouring some of the paint into a tray. Vlad picked up two rollers, handing one to Danny as the halfa got to his feet. Danny scratched his paint-streaked face, flicking hair back out of his eyes. The black strands also bore signs of their hard day of work, sections sticky with white clumps of drying paint.

Danny dipped his roller into the tray, working paint evenly through his tool before beginning to coat one of the freshly-sanded walls. "Y'know," he grunted as he worked, "I haven't painted a room since Jazz decided to turn her walls Hawaiian Pink. Stupid colour, and she changed it back to Pale Sky only a year later. That was when I was recovering from having my head cut off when Dad tried to calibrate one of his new weapons to ignore my ectosignature, so I didn't have to help her paint her walls back to their original blue."

Vlad swept his own roller down the adjacent wall. "How did adjusting to ghost powers in the house go?" he ventured.

Danny shrugged. "As well as they could, I guess. We all had to make allowances and be as honest as we could about things. At first there were a lot of injuries, what with the weapons targeting us automatically, but those died down as we went through the vault and got rid of anything that we couldn't recalibrate."

Vlad sighed, glancing sideways at his friend. "Is that why you have so many more scars than when I last saw you?"

Danny's roller dipped to the floor as he turned away from the wall, and Vlad could only be glad for the drop sheet as white was splotched onto its waterproof fabric. "Why?"

Vlad's mouth worked at this unexpected question, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

"Why do you care so much, Vlad?" Danny pressed, stepping closer to him. "You never had a problem hurting me in the past, but since I've come here, and especially since we went out that first time, you've been really… different. You're not the Vlad I left in that lab."

"You're not the Danny that left me," Vlad retorted. "As for my increased interest in you… I care now. Before, I only ever thought about what I wanted, and what each person could offer to me. I messed up a lot of things, and I realised that about fifteen years ago." He took a deep breath before continuing, startled by his sudden honesty. "I want to fix the things I ruined. Do you think we could give this friendship thing a genuine attempt?"

The teacher sighed, running a hand through his paint-stiffened hair. "Is that why you've started using my nickname?" His mouth curved into that delightfully bright grin. "You goofball."

Before Vlad could respond, Danny had hefted his roller upright and ran it across the man's face, effectively covering it in paint.

Vlad spluttered as the halfa howled with laughter, blindly lunging with his own roller and managing to catch Danny on the ear. The younger yelped, skipping out of the way and dipping his roller into the tray before flicking it so that paint splattered across Vlad's overalls.

By the time they finished their battle, the tin of paint was empty and both men were covered in Eggshell White. Danny phased them both clean before teleporting back into the town's hardware store to buy more paint.

Vlad set about using his roller to even out the splatters that dripped from the walls and ceiling, grinning so hard that he felt like his face might be stuck in a smile forever.

.:.

Dandelions sway in the breeze when Vlad goes outside to let out the chooks one morning. The pleasant weather has him standing straight, head back to breathe in deeply. By the looks of things, it's going to be an exceptionally beautiful day.

For the first time in over twenty years, Vlad doesn't want to go back inside.

The chickens spread out across the yard, and a rabbit twitches in the shade of the flowering wisteria. The breeze ruffles his loose hair again, and Vlad's curiosity pushes him to turn towards the shed – the only building with a window left intact on the entire property. Since he had smashed every window and mirror in the mansion, Vlad hadn't once seen his reflection except for fleeting glimpses distorted in puddles or the back of a spoon.

The man staring back at him from the shed window looks more like a ghost than anything Vlad has ever encountered. Pale, sickly, with wild hair hanging loose halfway down his back. When did he last cut it? A year ago? Five?

Vlad grabs a set of scissors from inside the shed and goes about giving himself a haircut. He does it much shorter than he has ever worn it before, hacking the strands and knots and clumps until it sticks up in small, unwashed tufts.

Those are cut off just as quickly, leaving Vlad with a messy, uneven hack job. He drops the scissors, spinning in a circle as the wind plays across his neck and shoulders. He feels so much lighter, freer than he's felt in a long time. The last time he felt this good was the first time he went flying…

His gaze catches his hands as he holds them above his head, and Vlad's mouth twists into a frown as he glances back at his reflection. Gosh, he's so filthy.

Tossing his head, Vlad eyes the pond. It was always one of his favourite additions to the property – a self-sustaining pond filled with crystal clear water, filtered by the carefully selected plants along one side. All appearances suggest it to be nothing more than a water feature, but the pond is actually a perfectly-constructed natural swimming pool.

His clothes are off and Vlad barely remembers to check the water for any submerged snags or other hazards that could have appeared since last year's maintenance before leaping in. Despite the warmth of the early spring day, the water is still bitingly cold. Vlad's jump propels him to the bottom and he remains there as long as he can, giddy with joy even as his lungs begin to burn.

He resurfaces and takes a huge gulp of air before ducking under again, scrubbing his fingers through his filthy hair. The cold is exhilarating, and Vlad resurfaces with breathless laughter. He feels so alive!

Sitting on a submerged ledge, Vlad uses his hands to slowly rub away the layer of accumulated grime on his skin. How long has it been since he was clean?! He'll have a proper shower later, with soap and shampoo and a scrubbing brush, but for now this will be enough.

Laying back in the water, Vlad feels his short, chunky hair sway with its movement, and wonders why he suddenly feels so great. In a couple of months, he'll have been here for a quarter of a century.

He wonders what Danny's doing as he begins to shiver.

Climbing out of the pond, Vlad prods his filthy clothes with a toe before deciding to leave them on the ground. He spreads his arms wide, letting the warm breeze dry him off. It briefly occurs to him that he must appear ridiculous, but Vlad brushes off the thought – he lives alone in a rural mansion and is currently surrounded by trees and a ghost shield. He can walk around naked all he wants – nobody's going to see him and call the police or anything like that.

The thought sends a chuckle from his throat that startles him, and then he is laughing, big proper gales of the sound that force him to hunch over and brace himself on his knees.

He's an old mind in a younger man's body, and as Vlad's laugher peters out, he realises that the house hasn't aged as graciously as him.

The castle looks horrible. Staring at it while the wind slowly lifts the moisture from his skin, Vlad realises that it looks like something haunted out of a horror movie. Maybe he should fix that.

The thought surprises him, and Vlad finds himself wondering what other outrageous things he might think and do if he allows himself to follow the promptings of this joyful mood.

Scooping up the scissors and his dirty clothes, Vlad heads back around to the house, mind turning with plans.

Maybe Danny hates him, and maybe he has no place in the world anymore, but Vlad knows where he belongs – right here. He's tired of sulking away the decades in squalor. He'll fix the mansion. There are five months left until autumn sets in with its storms – Vlad can repair the exterior of the building in that time, then work on the inside during the cold. At least he's continued to maintain the gardens, so that doesn't have to take extra months.

His mind made up, Vlad rounds the edge of the house.

At the top of the front steps stands the delivery boy, placing the last couple of bags of Vlad's weekly groceries in front of the door before giving his habitual polite knock. Vlad has never answered the door, but the boy always does it anyway – probably half out of professionalism, and half hoping that one day the crazy hermit might actually open his front door.

Vlad stands frozen as the youth turns, and the kid's eyes widen as they land on the recluse.

_Damn it…_

The boy swallows, eyes darting to the scissors in one of Vlad's hands before shooting back to his face. "Um, Mr Masters?"

Vlad dimly realises that he must look insane, standing at the end of the garden path with wild, uneven hair, scissors in one hand, muddy clothes in the other, and stark blooming naked.

When he doesn't respond, the youth continues, red spreading across his cheeks and wide eyes fixed firmly somewhere above Vlad's head. "Sorry to bother you, sir. I'm just delverin' your groceries."

Vlad nods, shifting so that his clothes cover his crotch. "Thank you," he says, voice perfectly level after years of suppressing his emotions in business meetings. And then, spurred on by his wickedly good mood and a certain stab of mischief, "Nice weather we're having today, hm?"

The boy's blush spreads up over his unfortunately large ears, hands curling around the hem of his uniform as he edges down the stairs. "Um, yeah… You might wanna put these groceries away, though, or your meat'll go bad."

Vlad smiles as the boy's gaze darts in the direction of the gate before moving back to the naked man on the edge of the garden. "Go on," he says, tilting his head. "I bet you've got more deliveries to make."

The teen's shoulders drop as he seems to relax. He heads down the driveway at a trot, and it's not until Vlad hears a car door slam that he sinks to his knees, laughter bubbling from his gut in hysterical waves as the embarrassment and absurdity of the entire situation slams into him.

The wind continues to blow, warm gusts ruffling Vlad's hair as he wipes away tears and heads inside. Clothes are a good idea, and then he might order some building supplies before going outside again.

A walk around the grounds is an appealing thought, and Vlad moves upstairs with a spring in his step, wondering if moths have eaten his old exercise clothes yet or if they're still shoved in a drawer at the back of his wardrobe.

.:.

Settling down in his armchair, Vlad sipped at his glass of ectoplasm mixed with wine. Snow softly piled on the sills of the windows, any outside sound muffled by its gentle descent. The fire burned hot and high in the hearth, driving away the winter chill and enveloping Vlad in a cocoon of warmth. He was comfortable, a little tired, and fully prepared to while away the evening immersed in _Dracula._

Vlad was thoroughly enjoying his re-visit of the classic, curling up tighter in the large chair as the horrors of the creature's castle were slowly revealed to the story's imprisoned protagonist. He would have to get Danny to read this sometime, to get the boy to experience _true_ horror instead of that ridiculous _Dead Teacher_ franchise that Vlad had been coerced into watching over the past few days. Leaning closer to his book, Vlad shivered involuntarily as Mr Harker's terrifying encounters continued to unfold.

Something appeared before the fireplace in a flash of light, and Vlad fell halfway out of his chair with a shriek. Danny, for of course it was him, cried out and dropped the items in his arms at Vlad's vocalisation, shifting into a fighting stance and igniting his hands with twin charges of ectoplasm. He looked around the room for the threat before finally finding Vlad, slumped over the edge of the chair and clutching at his chest.

The men stared at each other before Danny burst into laughter. The blasts around his fingers fizzled out, and the halfa clutched at his sides as he continued to howl with mirth.

"Oh, shut up," Vlad snapped, half-heartedly throwing the paperback that he had been reading in the boy's direction.

Danny sank to his knees, cackling. "I really scared you," he spluttered. "I-I… hahaha, I _actually_ scared the crap outta you!"

"Shut up," Vlad said again, standing up and prodding the teacher with his foot.

" _Dracula_?" Danny asked between giggles. "Oh, man, you need some real horror. Remind me to get you to play _Amnesia_ later."

Vlad decided that he didn't like the sound of that, and instead focused his attention on the items that Danny had dropped.

"You're not serious," he said, staring at the halfa's haul.

Still sitting on the floor, Danny was finally getting his laughter under control. "Dead serious," he said. "I'll buy you the game tonight… Pfft, _dead_ serious…"

"Your ridiculous puns aside," Vlad muttered, "I'm not putting this up with you."

"Aww, Vladdie," Danny whined, standing up and slinging his arms around the elder's shoulders. "You can't expect me to put it up _alone!_ It's Christmas Eve!"

"It's not going up," the man insisted. "And I thought that you didn't like Christmas."

Danny shrugged. "It's grown on me," he confessed. "I really like the feeling of the holiday, y'know? People all thinking of others and spending time with the ones who matter the most. It makes me really happy, because it's such a nice atmosphere."

"That's nice, but I'm not decorating," Vlad reiterated. "Besides, don't you have a Ghost Zone Christmas Party to attend?"

"Later," Danny said. "I told them I'd be there at about ten. That gives us plenty of time to put up the tree before we leave!"

Vlad' heart started a quick staccato tap dance against his ribs. Just the thought of all of those ghosts in one place, staring at him, judging him, whispering behind their hands as the _crippled disgrace_ dares to intrude on their celebration, makes him feel lightheaded. "I'm not going," he said quickly. "Besides, I'm not a ghost."

"You still have a core," Danny pointed out, "and you're my guest. Nobody's going to mind."

Vlad shook his head, pulling away from his friend and moving back, edging towards the darkness of the library shelves and away from the boy's ridiculous Christmas decorations and even more ridiculous plans for the evening.

Danny sighed, running a hand through his snow-flecked hair. "At least help me put up the tree," he pleaded.

Despite his muscular physique and a height to rival Jack Fenton's, Danny looked very small standing alone next to the pine tree and red-and-green boxes of decorations.

The sight sent Vlad's mind back to all of the Christmases since he had lost his powers. Every single year, no matter what the weather, regardless of whether Vlad burned it or not, Danny had delivered a gingerbread house, along with other delicious foods, a brightly-coloured card, and some sort of luxurious gift. Every year, just as the cold and solitude began to weigh on Vlad's mind, Danny had driven away the loneliness.

Sighing, the crippled halfa shuffled back into the circle of firelight. "Alright," he said grudgingly, "I'll help you to put up the tree, but I'm not going to the party."

Danny beamed, kneeling to rummage through his shopping. "Awesome! I've got a tree stand here, and there are lights and baubles and tinsel and candy canes-!"

" _What_ is _that?_ " Vlad demanded, staring in horror at the item that Danny had just removed from a bag.

The ghost boy's smile turned wicked. "It's not Christmas without ugly sweaters!"

"No."

"Vlaaaad."

" _No._ "

" _Please_ , Vlad?"

Vlad stared at the knitted monstrosity as Danny sent him a truly pathetic pout. The jumper was bright red, with a green Christmas tree covering half of the front and curving around the side to reach its spiky branches across the back as well. Gold and silver circles dotted the tree to represent baubles, and a gold star had been embroidered where the tree's apex curved over the shoulder of the garment.

If that had been the extent of the item's decoration, Vlad probably would have agreed to suffer through an evening of wearing the blasted thing.

Danny, still grinning in self-satisfaction, fiddled with something tucked under the hem of the jumper. In response, little lights – actual tiny red-and-gold lights – began to flash along the embroidered branches.

Oh, hell… " _No._ "

"But I've got a matching one!" Danny exclaimed, setting Vlad's jumper aside to pull out another hideous garment, this one knitted with a massive reindeer face. A reindeer face with a bright red, flashing, light-bulb nose.

Suddenly the first sweater didn't look so bad.

.:.

Vlad grunts as he slips over the edge, fingers curling around the gutter as his body slams into the side of the castle. The wind tugs at his clothing, snapping his loose shirt to one side as his shoes scrabble uselessly against the wall. His fingers are burning, slipping in their grip on the gutter full of slimy leaves. Slowly, one by one, they begin to lose the battle against gravity.

The toolbox slides down the roof's slope, falling past Vlad and crashing onto the ground far below. Vlad tries to pull himself back onto the roof, muscles straining and feet kicking wildly as the wind continues its attempts to rip him into freefall.

The gutter creaks beneath his weight, and just as Vlad's foot manages to find purchase on the uneven stone wall, it tears from the roof with the shriek of rending metal.

Everything pulls away from him, and with the rush of air and sickening vertigo, the ground slams into Vlad's shoulder and hip and his head smacks against the bricks that border the flowerbed.

One of the things about being immortal is that even when your head splits like an overripe melon, you'll eventually return to consciousness. The first sensation Vlad notices is how cold he is. He's lying on something hard, his cheek pressed into dirt that's heavy with the scent of blood.

Bricks, his mind tells him. You fell and cracked your head open on the bricks.

He tries to open his eyes, but as soon as a sliver of light makes its way through the gap in his eyelids, pain stabs through Vlad's head. Okay, so maybe that's a bad idea right now.

Lying on the damp, cold ground, Vlad keeps his eyes closed as he wriggles his fingers and toes. They all seem to move okay, but the arm twisted beneath him hurts almost as badly as his throbbing skull.

The ground beneath his head is definitely sticky, and Vlad takes a deep breath, ignoring the twinge of pain from ribs that are badly bruised and possibly cracked. The next breath is no less painful, but comes a little easier. Vlad wonders how much blood he's lost – probably not all of it, since his heart would have stopped beating pretty quickly after that head wound – and how long it's been since he's breathed. If previous experience was anything to go by, he'll have to lie here for a while longer, let his body resume the general processes of being alive…

Vlad doesn't know how long it takes him to open his eyes. When he finally manages it, only one can actually open – the other eyelid is crusted closed, presumably with the fluid that has poured from his busted head. He sits up slowly, moving his good hand to gently rub away the filth that stops him from opening that second eye.

His fingers come away red. In fact, the whole area surrounding Vlad – the bricks, the dirt, his clothes – everything is rusty with blood. Chunks of something else cling to the bricks, and Vlad runs his fingers over the semi-dried bits of his splattered brain in morbid fascination.

The next thing he does is feel his head.

Fingers barely graze the squishy mess before Vlad pulls his hand away with a sob, entire body seizing with pain and vision momentarily going dark. He breathes in and out, in and out, waiting for the agony to ebb back into a more manageable throbbing. He looks up at the sky, at the clouds that hang dark and heavy overhead, while he waits for the nausea welling in his throat to pass.

Inside. He has to get inside before it starts to rain.

It takes several attempts for Vlad to lurch to his feet, but he finally manages to lean against the castle wall. His knees tremble beneath him, and his fingers leave smears of red on the rough stone surface, but he's up and standing and he can hobble weakly in the direction of the door.

It's a slow, agonising process, but Vlad makes it inside. There are no groceries on the doorstep, so he can't have been unconscious for more than a couple of days. If he had been found by the delivery boy, Vlad supposes that he would have woken up in the morgue, or maybe even a coffin.

Claustrophobia washes over him at the thought of being trapped in a wooden box, buried and unable to escape as he slowly suffocates. And then revives. And dies almost straight away from lack of air, stuck in a never ending cycle of asphyxiation and reawakening.

Would Danny come and save him once he realised what had happened, or would he leave Vlad there forever, trapped in a cycle of agony and oblivion?

Something inside him whispers that Danny would never leave him like that, and the injured man lurches in the direction of the kitchen. Ectoplasm. So long as he can get some ectoplasm into him, he won't pass out again.

He doesn't even make it halfway across the foyer before his legs give way beneath him.

Vlad hits the floor with a shriek and curls up on his good side, blinking away tears and struggling to keep himself from throwing up. It takes several deep breaths before he can move, and Vlad crawls the rest of the way to the kitchen, feeling his way blindly across the flagstones as he grapples with consciousness.

.:.

Vlad cringed as Danny pushed him through the door, keeping his head down and trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. The flashing jumper made this a tad more difficult than it would have otherwise been, but heads didn't start to turn until the hero halfa entered the lair behind him.

Chatter died down in their immediate vicinity, and Vlad ground his teeth as Danny brushed against his side. Acting as though they didn't have a dozen ghosts staring unashamedly in their direction, Danny raised a hand that glowed with blue ectoplasm. The blast flickered for a moment before rising into the air, joining the hundreds of other energy orbs that floated above their heads.

Vlad's core ached at the mere sight of blue energy, so he dragged his gaze back to the floor and decided to pretend that the orbs weren't even there.

Having officially announced his presence, Danny finally moved out of the doorway, tugging on Vlad's sleeve so that the older halfa would follow him. Vlad briefly debated digging his heels into the floor and refusing to budge so much as an inch, but more ghosts were beginning to stare, and he heard something that sounded suspiciously like his name whispered below the hum of the party. Going with Danny suddenly didn't seem like such a bad idea, and Vlad grudgingly allowed himself to be dragged through the throng of revellers.

Festive music blasted from an impressive set of speakers, and lights and assorted decorations associated with several different yuletide holidays hung from the walls and rafters. He kept close to Danny as they skirted the dance floor, and Vlad's heart pounded as he recognised the robotic spectre that waltzed a damsel with flaming hair across that space with such vigour that the other dancers made sure to clear a path before they were mown down. More faces were recognisable as well; two dumpy ghosts, one in overalls and the other wearing an apron and hairnet, were intertwined beneath a sprig of mistletoe; a young spectre wearing a pirate outfit and with added Santa beard and hat led a gaggle of other youngsters through the crowd, screaming in delight as they chased a runaway cat; a bespectacled character typed frantically on his keyboard in between sips from a steaming mug, shouting the lines of his Christmas poem as he went.

The party was exactly like the ones that Vlad had attended in the past. Its familiarity, with the atmosphere of goodwill and the energy of hundreds of cores filling the building, had the cripple's heart fluttering wildly. Now, more than ever before, he wished that the past quarter of a century had been nothing but a nightmare.

Vlad cast his gaze about the room, eyes finally alighting upon Desiree, and his panic settled somewhat. The wishing ghost would surely grant his plea.

She floated near the apex of a massive Christmas tree on the opposite side of the dance floor, arms heaped with trailing tinsel. She was speaking to a woman who was currently fixing the star in its place, and Vlad's breath caught painfully in his chest as he recognised her.

The white hair was far longer than it had once been, trailing down her back in a braid decorated with holly. She didn't wear her uniform, and was instead swathed in a generic red Christmas dress trimmed with fluffy white at the skirt's hem. She actually had the womanly curves to fill out such a garment, and Vlad realised from just one look that she had continued to age where her original had not.

Desiree said something that was lost to the noise of the party, and Danielle threw back her head, mouth wide with laughter.

Vlad didn't realise that he had stopped moving until Danny gave his jumper an extra tug. "Hey, you okay?"

It was a ridiculous question considering the fact that Vlad had resisted attending the party since it had first been suggested, but any number of smart comments that he would have usually responded with seemed unable to squeeze their way out of his dry throat.

Danny didn't push for an answer, opting instead to guide Vlad towards a rough semicircle of armchairs that enclosed a fireplace. "Here, just like home," he chirped, leading the man to an empty seat. Vlad collapsed into it, fingers curling around the armrests tightly as waves of sound crashed over him.

Danny plopped into the seat beside him, waving a hand dismissively. "This isn't so bad, right?"

Vlad stared at the leaping green fire, focusing on breathing evenly and holding onto his chair for dear life. Everything here was exactly like all the previous Christmas parties he'd attended – noisy, busy, and filled with the smell of good food. He took another slow, deep breath, feeling some tension begin to bleed out of his shoulders.

"You're late," grumbled a voice from somewhere behind Vlad. He twisted at the sound, gaze alighting on a ghost sporting gleaming glasses and a garish scarf of what looked like knitted tinsel.

Danny didn't glance up from the fireplace. "It's not midnight yet," he responded, irritation evident in his voice.

"You missed my Christmas poem."

The halfa sighed. "I'll come round sometime next week and you can recite it for me again," he said.

"You said you'd be here by ten."

"Damn it, you know I've been busy!" Danny growled, finally turning to face the grinning Ghost Writer.

"Calm down, I was just kidding," the spectre said, clapping a hand to the ghost kid's shoulder. "Now, would you two halfas like something to drink?"

"I'm a teetotaller tonight," Danny said, "but some ectoplasm would be nice."

Ghost Writer rolled his eyes. "Do you really have to be so serious? Come on, it's Christmas!"

Danny shook his head stubbornly. "I have a delicate procedure to perform tomorrow," he explained. "I need to be sober."

Vlad turned a questioning gaze to his friend, but before he could ask what Danny was talking about, the writer's hand bumped his shoulder. "What about you, Plasmius?"

Vlad swallowed involuntarily, glancing at Danny. When the boy made no indication that Vlad shouldn't have a drink, he looked back to the Ghost Writer. It had been so long since he'd been here, surrounded by spectres, his core thrumming with the power that filled the room. It sent Vlad's heart fluttering wildly again, and he found himself smiling. "Surprise me."

The ghost raised his eyebrows before drifting in the direction of the bar, and Vlad turned back to the flames. "He's wrong, by the way," he said.

"About what?" Danny sighed, leaning back in his chair and stretching his hands above his head.

It hurt to say it. The words sent a bitter pang through his chest, and Vlad fisted his fingers in the hem of his horrible flashing jumper. "I'm not a halfa."

Danny shifted, and Vlad stiffened as a hand was pressed against his chest. "Functioning or not," the ghost child said with fierce intensity, "you have a core – I can feel it, right here. You drink ectoplasm, you understand the language of the dead, and you're _immortal_. Ghost powers or not, you're still a halfa." The boy glared at him with blue eyes that flashed momentarily green. "You belong here, with us, with _me,_ so don't tell yourself otherwise."

Danny's hand was cold, even through the thick knitted jumper.

Vlad sighed, shrugging away from his friend's touch. "Fine," he grumbled, if only to get the schoolteacher to drop the subject.

Danny settled back into his own seat, frowning and obviously unconvinced. Vlad watched fairy lights draped around the fireplace slowly fade on and off, cycling from dark to bright to dark again every handful of seconds. The party's sounds swept around him, but he sat alone, as though trapped in the eye of the hurricane.

The writer returned and handed Vlad a glass of something purple that fizzed before turning his back on the man in favour of starting a conversation with Danny.

Vlad couldn't even muster up the energy to feel slighted; he slumped in his chair and sipped his drink, glaring at anyone who came too close.

A figure both large and orange leaped into view with a great deal of shouting, and Vlad recoiled as Jack bounded past him and swept Danny into an embrace that looked painful. "Danny-boy, I haven't seen you in ages!" he bellowed, lifting the unfortunate boy out of his seat and squeezing.

"Dad!" Danny gasped in pain, squirming before phasing out of his father's grasp. "You saw me a few weeks ago," he responded, sinking back into his chair whilst massaging bruised ribs. The Ghost Writer gave the newcomer a single, horrified glance and disappeared in a burst of dark green smoke, re-materialising across the room.

Jack was as obnoxiously orange as he'd always been, practically filling the entire space and demanding everyone's attention simply by being there. His presence seemed to swell, pressing down upon Vlad and sending his heart stuttering and leaping and threatening to choke him with its wild beating. He shrank back in the seat, fingers digging into its overstuffed armrests.

"You're late," Jack admonished his son.

"It's not midnight yet," Danny retorted, reclaiming his glass of ectoplasm from the coffee table. "I said I wouldn't get here until late, anyway."

"You said ten."

"So?"

Jack righted the Santa Claus hat that perched precariously atop his broad brow. "It's quarter to twelve! Santa won't come if we're not all in bed soon!"

Danny's mouth twitched and Vlad grinned at the younger man's frustration. "Well," Danny said, "we got held up."

Vlad's grin disappeared at the inclusive word.

Jack glanced at him, something twisting his expression that Vlad couldn't quite place before he turned back to his son. "Well, Danny, I think I'm gunna go say goodbye to some folks, and then I'll take Mads and Elle back home. We can't stay up too late, after all!"

"You'll never get Mum out of here," Danny responded, running a finger across the rim of his empty glass to collect the decorative sugar crystals. "She's been trying to talk to Walker for ages about martial arts, and now that there's the Christmas Truce, she can chat without him having to run off and chase any criminals."

Jack plucked the cherry from the bottom of Danny's glass. Vlad scowled at the action, righteous fury flashing through him before he remembered that Danny hated them.

"I'll get your cousin first," the burly man decided, "and then she can get your mother."

Danny nodded. "Smart idea," he said. "By the way, I left some gifts in the bottom drawer of my dresser for you guys. You can have yours whenever you want, but go put the ones for Jazz and her kids under the tree. I'm not sure if I'll make it home for dinner tomorrow."

Jack glanced towards Vlad again with eyes that were darker than usual.

Ah.

That's what the expression was – malice. Unusual for Jack to show such an emotion, but Vlad felt oddly refreshed as the man finally displayed something other than cloying, undeserved affection towards him.

"Try to make it," Jack advised. "Jazz and Jim are cooking it, and you know how upset Jazz'll be if you miss it."

"I don't think that she'll mind, actually," Danny said coolly, meeting his father's gaze evenly. "I have some things to do, and she knows that."

Again, Jack's gaze flitted towards Vlad. It was a welcome blow, and Vlad found that with every glare it was a little easier to breathe.

Finally, Jack was angry at him for what he'd done. Vlad deserved that anger, and embraced it wholeheartedly. Twenty-five years ago, he had sought to destroy this man and steal his family. Vlad had lived with the consequences of his attempt for a quarter of a century, and now that he had finally conquered his own self-loathing, he could handle any punishments that others might fling his way.

Danny sighed, getting to his feet and placing a hand on Vlad's arm. "Stay here," he said. "I just need to talk to my dad for a moment."

The two Fentons walked towards the bar, their conversation melding with the noise of the party. Jack squared his shoulders. Danny slashed a hand through the air. They stood toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye, man-to-man, and Vlad could only stare at the adult that Danny had become.

Jack abruptly turned away from his son, stalking in the direction of the Christmas tree.

Danny ran a hand through his hair in frustration, making his way back to Vlad, and Vlad sat there stunned. The boy was choosing him over family, over _Christmas._ It was everything that Vlad had ever wanted all in one lovely package, but it felt so _wrong._

After all that he had done, Vlad realised that somewhere over his years of isolation, he had decided that he would never be worthy of Danny's attention.

The halfa plopped back down into his armchair, picking at the peeling skin around a fingernail.

"You don't have to skip Christmas to be with me." As soon as he said the words, Vlad wanted to reach out and tear them back inside himself.

Danny tilted his head in that maddening habit of his, mouth working its way back into a smile. "I know," he said, "but I want to. And who says that we're skipping anything?"

Vlad remembered the tree back in his library – how could he forget when pine needles still jutted from the weave of Danny's jumper? – and inwardly conceded that perhaps the boy was right.

"I am _not_ putting cookies and milk out," he warned.

Danny cackled. "We only do that for Dad," he said, tossing his head in the general direction that Jack had disappeared. "He's convinced that Santa's a benevolent ghost or something that we haven't been able to catch. He's been putting up increasingly elaborate traps every year."

Vlad groaned. "He was the same in college – it drove me nuts. You'd think that he would have given up by now."

"He caught something one year," Danny confessed.

"Really?"

"Mhm." The halfa readjusted the sagging bulb on his jumper. "Of course, Dad sleeps through everything, even his ghost sense. I got up and went downstairs, full Phantom getup and all that, and sure enough there was some glowing guy in the cage in a magnificent green robe. Turns out that a bunch of ghosts of saints and the like are all Santa, and only leave the Ghost Zone every Christmas Eve."

Vlad stared at him. "You lie."

"I do not," Danny retorted. "Mum can vouch for me – she woke up as well. Of course, since then I've always sabotaged the traps."

Something bubbled inside Vlad's chest and he found himself laughing, the good, full-scale laughter that keeps going until your sides feel like they're going to shake apart.

Danny sighed, sinking deeper into his chair. "We should probably head off soon," he said. "I've got something to do tomorrow that I really need to sleep for."

Vlad nodded. "I've just got to talk to someone first," he said, glancing in the direction of the Christmas tree.

Danny moaned. "Are you kidding me? Even after all this, you're still gunna go find Desiree?"

Vlad stiffened. "I'm not –"

"Don't lie," Danny interrupted. "I already organised it with her anyway – she can't grant any of your wishes right now."

"You wished for that?" Vlad growled.

Danny glared at him.

Vlad pushed himself to his feet, glaring right back. "You had no right."

"Of course I didn't," Danny grumbled. "It's only the entire person that I am that you're going to erase if you wish for this to never have happened!"

"Don't be absurd," Vlad spat, "I only wanted –"

"To undo everything that's happened since that gun," Danny shouted, leaping to his own feet. Vlad stood his ground, resisting the urge to step back as the taller man stood directly in front of him. "If you do that, you're not just undoing _your_ past, but _mine_ as well! At least in this timeline my secret hasn't ended with me in a lab, or an evil overlord, or with my friends and family dead! I've seen so many futures for teenage me, and this is the only one where none of those things happen!"

The party had fallen quiet around them, everyone was staring, and Vlad stung like he'd been slapped in the face. When he didn't say anything, the younger let out a strangled sound before disappearing in a flash of light.

Vlad stood there as the silence pressed down on him. His heart was loud and fast and guilty, clenched fists hurting as fingernails dug into palms, breathing shaky and hitching.

He blinked, and tears slipped down his cheeks.

.:.

His head won't heal.

All those suicide attempts, all the times he's starved himself during a haze of depression, the clumsiness and general bad hygiene of almost twenty-five years, and Vlad's body has always regenerated from whatever he did to it.

It's been three weeks since he fell off the roof. There are no mirrors around, and he's far too weak to make it outside to the shed window, but Vlad knows from gentle touches that always send him to the floor in agony that he's not getting better.

He went outside only once, and it took nearly all day to move the chooks to their winter dwelling in the laundry. Now Vlad sleeps curled up on the kitchen floor in front of the stove, rousing only to let those birds in and out, and to drink ectoplasm.

Whenever he gets to his feet, he has to lean against the bench and breathe while he tries not to pass out. Half the time he faints anyway, only to wake later stiff and sore with blurry vision and a throbbing head with half of the brain gone.

His core twists and aches within him, and Vlad knows that he just isn't whole enough anymore to regenerate. He curses immortality, swears like he hasn't in decades, and decides that it's time to call in some help.

Vlad turns off the ghost shield and stops collecting the groceries, hoping that the delivery boy with the overlarge ears will get the hint and send a message to Danny.

Another week passes, and Vlad sleeps and moans and quivers with fever on the kitchen floor as the gaping crater of meat atop his head weeps pus and blood and sticky black fluid that smells like something dead.

He's awake when the front door slams, and Vlad almost sobs with relief at the sound of shoes on marble. He doesn't care who it is, so long as they find him and take him to Danny.

The intruder's footsteps grow quieter, moving towards the stairs and away from the kitchen, and panic flutters in Vlad's gut. He tries to call out, but his mouth is thick and sticky with fever, voice dying and rasping.

He forces himself to his hands and knees, vision swimming as the pain makes his body seize up. He's shivering with fever and exertion, fingers threatening to slip in the sticky mess of bodily fluid that has congealed over the tiles.

By the time Vlad can see clearly again, the footsteps are moving across the floor above him, and he can hear their owner going from room to room. Searching.

He tries again, this time making it to his feet with a lurch and a gargling sob. He leans against the counter, knees trembling, fingers twisted through the handles of overhead cupboards to keep him from sliding back onto the tiles.

Ah. The cupboards.

The wrenches one open, blinking away the lights that burst in his vision. Fluid runs down his brow in tiny streams, dark and awful, and manages to get in one of his eyes. Vlad screws both eyelids shut against it, grasping for the pots and frying pans stacked neatly on their shelf, and as his legs fail they crash to the floor around him.

The world goes black, and Vlad thinks that he screams as the kitchenware clatters to the tiles and his body hits the floor. His ears are ringing, everything hurts, and his sides heave but there's nothing to throw up, not even ectoplasm.

The person above him starts running.

Vlad curls in on himself, clutching his spasming stomach as the kitchen door flies open and bangs against the wall with a sound that sends needles shooting through his skull. Everything's hazy, taking a back seat to the pain, and Vlad feels himself slipping into unconsciousness again.

Something cold brushes his brow, sweeping away the nausea with a pulse of energy that makes his core ache terribly. Vlad gasps with each breath, and as the buzzing in his ears subsides he hears another set of ragged breathing that matches his own.

"What the hell have you done to yourself?" a wrenchingly familiar voice murmurs.

Vlad keeps his eyes closed and focuses on breathing as Danny's wonderfully icy hands flutter over his mangled head. Everywhere they touch, the pain recedes, and blue light shines through Vlad's eyelids. He can see his blood vessels clearly thanks to this illumination, a purple network burned into his eyes.

"It didn't heal," he rasps involuntarily, some small part of him hoping that maybe the boy would be able to fix it, to fix everything…

"I can see that," Danny snaps, and Vlad wants so desperately to open his eyes and see the child.

Of course, Danny won't be a child anymore. That simple thought, that the man currently cradling Vlad's broken skull in his hands is a complete stranger in both looks and personality, keeps Vlad's eyes shut.

Perhaps it was better to remain like this, with Danny in the past. Vlad's already caused enough damage, and with every passing moment, the tight dread crouching in his gut threatens to rise and choke the recluse.

" _How_ did you do it?"

Vlad licks his lips, wondering if Danny would be kind enough to give him some ectoplasm. "I was fixing the roof," he confesses.

Danny groans, fingers pausing at Vlad's temples. "Well, I'm gunna have to put you to sleep for a bit so I can work on your brain."

Cold, soft like fresh snow, begins to fall through Vlad's thoughts.

He struggles through the haze, mouth working silently for a moment before managing to get it to form words. "I need a working core."

Everything continues to fade while Danny sighs, and as Vlad slips under, he could swear that he hears Danny whisper "I know".

.:.

There was no music – it had turned off sometime in the past hour, as spectres slowly cleared the lair. Vlad shifted on the barstool, sipping moodily at something so strong that it burned his throat. Christmas lights blinked in his peripheral vision, fading from bright to dark and back again.

His glass was empty.

Vlad raised a finger to the ghost behind the bar, motioning to his cup.

"Don't you think you should go home?" a deep voice enquired, Jack's bulk sliding into the space beside him.

Vlad grumbled something non-committal, accepting a fresh glass with a nod of thanks towards the bartender. His head pounded, sending spikes of pain into his temples and eyes. Maybe this next drink would be enough to tip Vlad over the edge into numbness…

Jack placed a hand over the rim of the glass before Vlad could raise it to his mouth. "Hey, V-man…"

Vlad shrugged away from the man's proximity, sloshing half of his drink onto the bar in the process. The music was gone, but his head still throbbed with a constant beat. The lights blinked slowly on and off, their reds and greens blurring together until Vlad could no longer distinguish the individual bulbs.

His hands were sticky, and there were no napkins nearby. Glancing down, Vlad appraised his horrible Christmas sweater for a moment. With a smirk, he wiped the liquor from his fingers and onto the garish knitted tree.

Why was he wearing something so monstrous?

Jack was still there. Had he been there long? Vlad wondered what he wanted.

"Come on," the big man sighed, taking Vlad's elbow. "Let's get you home."

Jack was such a good roommate. You never knew, when you went to a new college, what sort of person you'd be saddled with. What a good roommate, to look after Vlad at those wild college parties.

Vlad glanced up, frowning. Why could he see the fridge through the bartender's translucent green skin?

"Ghost," he mumbled. Jack had to know – he'd love this!

"Yeah," Jack grunted, "that's a ghost, V-man. C'mon."

Vlad allowed himself to be pulled away from the bar, but it was difficult to walk properly. His feet seemed too big, and if it weren't for Jack's supporting hand, he'd probably have fallen over by now, with all this tinsel and wrapping paper on the floor.

Was it Christmas? That'd explain the flashing sweater that he was wearing.

They began to cross a dance floor, and Vlad moaned. "'S the par'y finished?" he shouted. How disappointing – he'd always liked parties, especially at the family castle in Wisconsin. Jack would've loved the castle as well. Maybe Vlad should invite him during the next college break…

"Yes, the party's over," Jack grunted, and Vlad realised that his friend was half-carrying him.

"D'everyone have a good time?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, man. It was a real blast."

Hm. Jack seemed down about something. "Aw, c'mon," Vlad drawled, "'s Christmas! Y'find any pretty girls?"

The burly man sighed. "Yeah, Vlad. I've found the prettiest one of all."

"Tell meee."

This time Jack smiled a little bit. "She has really nice hair, like a sunset."

Vlad sighed as they reached the opposite end of the dance floor. "Me too, man. Sounds like we've similar tastes. Wass'er name?" There were more flashing lights here, framing a door and making it difficult to focus on anything. They were so bright, they made Vlad's eyes hurt.

"Maddie."

Vlad chuckled. "Nah, not my girl. Wha's _your_ girl's name?"

They stopped walking, and Jack simply stared at him.

"What?"

"Vlad," he said gently, "it's 2032. We're not in college anymore."

Vlad frowned, looking around the room with vision that swam. "Where're we, then?"

"We're taking you home," Jack said, his voice firm and commanding.

A tidbit of information swam to the surface of Vlad's muddled thoughts. "We're'n the Ghost Zone, aren't we?"

Jack nodded, shoulders slumping. "Yeah, V-man, we are."

With that tiny scrap of knowledge, everything fit together like a puzzle, and Vlad's world reeled. " _You!_ " he screamed, staggering away from Jack and pointing a trembling finger at the man. "You ruined _everything!_ "

Red energy shot from his finger in a jagged arc of lighting, and Jack blocked it with a casual wave of his own glowing hand. "You ruined it for yourself," he responded, eyes sadder than Vlad had ever seen them.

" _No!_ I won't allow it! You stole Maddie, and you have Jazmine, and you and your _stupid_ machines half-killed your own son! You don't deserve him!"

"No, I don't deserve him," Jack agreed, parrying another blow. Vlad grinned in satisfaction, opening his mouth to respond, but Jack spoke first. "But let me tell you right now, you deserve him even less than I do."

Anger, hot and powerful, burst from Vlad's core in a stream of fire. "SHUT UP!"

Why were his shots so _slow?!_ Jack blocked every single one of them effortlessly, without even changing his stance.

"But for some reason," the big halfa continued, "he's still at your house, waiting for you. He cares more about you than I could ever fathom, even after all you've done."

"SHUT YOUR FAT PIEHOLE!" Vlad screamed, foregoing spectral attacks in favour of launching himself at the man. Instead of colliding, Vlad sailed through Jack's intangible body and hit the table behind him with enough force to split off two of its legs.

Everything tilted alarmingly, and Vlad lay in the wreckage of the table, panting. His body ached, his stomach hurt… Vlad rolled over, heaving bile onto the floor until there was nothing left to throw up, his vision going dark around the edges with the exertion.

A gentle hand held him clear of the mess, moving Vlad into a sitting position and pressing a cup of water against his mouth. "Rinse and spit," Jack ordered, and, just like back when they were teenagers, Vlad obeyed.

Vlad didn't remember how they got back to his castle. One moment he was sitting in the wreckage of the table, breathing in the smell of tinsel and vomit. The next thing he recalled was Jack dumping him unceremoniously on Vlad's bed before disappearing in a flash of light.

.:.

He woke to a head that screamed with every heartbeat. Vlad lay on his bed, squinting at the ceiling as beams of light shot through the gap in his curtains and burned his eyes with their intensity.

It was freezing, and Vlad groaned as his curtains stirred in a gentle breeze. His window was open, _in the bloody middle of bloody winter_. He dimply remembered leaving it open the previous day, when the sun had beat down on the snow-covered yard and Vlad had reasoned that he should air out his room a bit while the weather was still rather pleasant.

Oh, how he _ached._

Levering himself to his feet, Vlad moaned as his head gave a particularly vicious throb. He shuffled towards the window with his eyes firmly closed, reaching out like a blind man until his fingers closed upon the windowsill. Shivering as they brushed against snow, Vlad pulled the window shut and latched it tightly before drawing the curtains closed and ambling back in the direction of his bed. Whatever time it was, whatever day it was, he didn't give a damn – it was far too early to be up with a hangover this nasty.

The pounding on his door was perfectly in sync with the pounding of his head. Vlad covered his ears with a cry, staggering away from the noise and crashing into his bookshelf.

The door swung open and Vlad cried out again at the light it allowed into the room, sliding to the floor as his hands moved to cover his eyes instead.

"Vlad?!"

"Shhhh, not so loud," he whimpered.

Footsteps moved across the room, their carpet-muffled footfalls amplified to stomping by Vlad's throbbing skull. There was a rustle of cloth as Danny crouched beside him, and Vlad sighed as cool hands covered his own, the icy balm of Danny's healing seeping through his skin and sweeping away the hangover like old cobwebs. Vlad peeked through his fingers in time to see the soft blue sparks wash over his limbs, wiping them clean of their lingering ache.

Danny removed his hands, shifting to sit next to Vlad. "You must be freezing."

Vlad shrugged. "A bit," he confessed, glancing down at the jumper that still flashed weakly, its batteries almost spent. "Sorry about this," he offered, gesturing to the stains left by vomit and liquor.

The younger man sighed. "The fact that you even wore it is good enough for me."

Vlad kept his gaze on the floor, the fight with Jack uncomfortably clear in his mind. "Why are you here?" he whispered, and for a moment they were back in the library, firelight throwing their faces into dark shadows as they sipped wine that desperately needed to breathe and ate spicy noodles from soggy boxes.

Danny's mouth quirked. "I've been waiting for you to ask that again," he answered just as softly. "Have a shower and come downstairs, and I'll show you."

Before Vlad could think of what to say, Danny stood, stretched his arms above his head with a groan, and ambled out of the room.

Vlad scrubbed himself thoroughly under a stream of unbelievably hot water before dressing in his warmest slacks and sweater and heading down to the ground floor.

Danny was waiting for him in the library, leaning easily against the fireplace. "Hey," he greeted, "Merry Christmas, Vlad."

Vlad swallowed, his throat tightening. Lights in their tree flashed, reflected in his friend's eyes. "About last night-"

"Forget it," Danny insisted, waving a hand. "We were both tense. I shouldn't have taken you to the party."

"No, I mean, yes, but I don't just want to apologise." Vlad struggled to find the words, flashes of red lightning bursting through his fuzzy memories. "I think… I fought your father last night, and I think I used ghost powers."

Danny nodded with a grin. "Yeah, Dad came and told me. It just confirms my hypothesis."

Well, this was certainly interesting. "What hypothesis would that be?" Vlad said.

"You're core's not ruined," Danny explained. "It's still full of power, but you can't consciously access it. Sure, your head didn't heal when you fell off the roof, but that's because your power can't be adapted to different tasks right now – it's just raw energy, like the blasts you were throwing last night."

Vlad leaned against the back of the couch, staring at his friend. Before he could find something to say, before Vlad could sort out exactly _what_ he was even feeling, Danny moved towards the tinsel-covered abomination that was currently shedding needles all over the lovely Persian rug.

A box was sitting beneath the tree, wrapped in unassuming green paper and bound with a black velvet ribbon. "For you," Danny said, stooping to pick up the gift and handing it to Vlad. "I can only apologise because it took so long, but nothing like this has ever been done before, so I had to be sure that it was perfect."

Vlad took the box with numb fingers. "I don't have anything for you," he whispered, cheeks heating with embarrassment.

His friend laughed. "You've already given it to me," Danny said. "You've spent the past few weeks with me, after all. I couldn't be happier if you gave me the most expensive or extravagant thing you could think of."

Sitting in his armchair, Vlad rubbed the end of the ribbon between two of his fingers as he recalled the past few weeks. Now that he thought about it, they had been some of the happiest of his life.

The ribbon came away from the gift with a gentle tug, and Vlad pulled at the tape fastening the paper until it, too, pulled away.

That was all he had to do – pull away from the hatred of the past, and start fresh. He could do that, couldn't he? Give up the avarice of the past, and just enjoy the good things that came his way.

So long as he could spend his time cultivating his friendship with Danny, Vlad supposed that it wouldn't be so bad. He could even work towards running more restaurants! That would be nice. It would be good to finally contribute to society, to find something to occupy himself that didn't involve avarice or revenge.

The paper tore away in strips, and Vlad lifted the lid off the box to reveal two plain metal bands nestled in Styrofoam moulds.

"What are these?" he asked, holding one up to the light for inspection. It was silver in colour, with a visible clasp and hinge. "Bracelets?"

Danny's grin was so wide that it looked like he'd burst. "One for you and one for me," he announced, reaching into the box and clasping the other band around his own thin wrist. "The best thing is what they're for."

Vlad clipped on his own bracelet, getting to his feet. Energy tingled uncomfortably up his arm at contact with the strange gift. "Danny-"

"C'mon!" The halfa grabbed him, phasing them both through the carpet. Vlad stiffened as they descended into the lab, pulling away from his friend as soon as his feet touched the strangely dust-free floor.

"What are you doing?!" he shouted, turning frantically to take in the deserted room… that didn't look so deserted. There was no dust in sight. The portal, somehow up and running again, hummed behind phase-proof blast doors.

In the middle of the room stood two plain operating tables, linked by wires and tubes and with restraints for the arms and legs. Atop the ghastly ensemble was a massive black bow that matched the one that had been on the bracelets. Beside the tables were trays of surgical equipment, and Vlad felt like he'd been slapped in the face.

Danny spread his arms wide. " _This_ is the real present," he announced. "You asked me why I'm here. When you split your head open, I realised that your core's losing stability. I can't let that happen."

Vlad shook his head, gaping at the machine. "It's impossible," he breathed.

"It is not," Danny interjected, taking Vlad by the elbow and leading him to one of the tables. "I got the idea from donating my heart to my mum." Danny made a show of pointing to one of the monitors, and when Vlad moved closer to look at it, the boy grabbed his hand and fastened it into a restraint. "If I can do it with my heart, then what about my core? You've already got the groundwork for it after all, so it's not like I'd be just throwing part of my core into you without anything for it to latch onto."

Panic, blind and suffocating, rose from Vlad's chest. His nightmare of the past couple of decades, with Danny powerless and hopelessly depressed, flashed through his thoughts. "No! Danny, you'll die! Let me go!"

"No, I won't." The boy held onto Vlad's free wrist. "Please, Vlad, I want to do this for you. Please get on the table."

Vlad shook his head frantically, trying to pull away from this insane person. There was no way it would work! Their cores had different frequencies, so a transplant would surely destroy them both. The donated core would warp Vlad's own, causing the type of death that you don't come back from. Danny's remaining core would also be affected by the signature given off by this, and he in turn would succumb thanks to post-surgical weakness.

Vlad couldn't let this happen.

"I know what you're thinking," Danny said. "That's what the bracelets are for – they're already working, changing our ectosignatures so that they match. In about ten more minutes, our power frequencies will be identical."

"Impossible," Vlad snapped.

Danny sighed. " _Please_ , Vlad," he said. "I promise that if anything starts to go wrong, the doctors'll stop. This technique is tried and tested – first we used it on ghostly animals, and then by a stroke of bad luck Ember got her core burned beyond healing. Skulker knew about our research, and just burst in one night and demanded that we try it. You saw the results last night."

Vlad remembered seeing those two in the middle of the dance floor, filled with power and happiness. "We're not ghosts."

"No," Danny mused, "we're halfas. We're tougher than ghosts in more ways than you know."

Vlad left this uncontested. "Say that I decide to do this," he said, gently tugging to try to make Danny let go of his wrist. "Then what? You just go back to teaching and I stay here on my own?"

Danny shrugged. "We can work that out later," he offered. "I was thinking maybe building up some more restaurants or something. There are plenty of people in Amity Park who can protect it for the most part, and they'll call me if anything too big to handle turns up, so it's not like I need to stay there anymore.

"I'm sick of living at home, Vlad. Of doing the same thing over and over again."

Danny looked at Vlad with such desperation that the man found himself nodding. "We can sort something out," Vlad agreed.

The corners of Danny's mouth lifted ever so slightly. "You know, they're planning on having civilians live on Mars in the next seventy years. If we set up a portal to get back in times of emergencies, what would you say about moving there for a while?"

Vlad sighed. "Let's just get your head out of the clouds and back on Earth for a moment," he said. "Hurry up and do this thing before I back out."

Danny grinned. "Seriously?!"

Vlad nodded, laying down on the table before he could stop himself.

He wanted this. Wanted it so desperately that he didn't even care if it killed him – so long as there was a chance, no matter how small, that Danny's plans for the future would come true.

The boy latched some cords onto Vlad's bracelet before phasing off Vlad's clothing and replacing them with a plain hospital gown. "Now to call the surgeons," he muttered, slipping a phone from his pocket and dialling a number from memory.

"You'll need to open the portal," Vlad said as the phone dialled. His stomach was already fluttering with nervousness, and he wasn't sure how long it would be until the insanity of this entire situation caught up with him.

Danny moved towards the wall, pressing a button on the control pad. The blast doors slid back soundlessly. "We're ready for you, so come through Plasmius' portal now," he said into the phone before hanging up.

Vlad turned his head, heart beating wild and fast as glowing figures entered through the portal. They wore gowns and gloves, and headed directly for the tables.

Vlad swallowed as one of them checked his restraints. Danny stood to the side, stripping off his clothing and pulling a paper gown over his own head. Everything seemed strange, surreal, and Vlad felt the first flickers of real panic spark within him.

"Danny, wait," he started, only to gasp in pain as fire raced through his core – Danny had clipped the cords attached to Vlad's bracelet onto his own, connecting their wrists.

Danny hopped onto the other operating table, laying down and allowing his limbs to be strapped into the restraints. "It's alright," he soothed as Vlad began to struggle. "Everything's going to be okay."

A doctor leaned over Vlad, taking up most of his vision. The only skin visible on her entire body was a strip between her mask and hairnet. Her eyes were the colour of a sunrise, and glowed just as brightly. Their edges crinkled with warmth that betrayed her smile. "Merry Christmas, Plasmius," she said in a voice that echoed.

"No!" Vlad shouted, gripped with terror – terror that he would never see Danny again, terror that they would both die lying here helpless.

Terror that he would never get to properly thank the boy for saving him.

" _Daniel!_ " Vlad screamed, fighting for all he was worth against his bonds as a clear mask was placed over his mouth and nose. Vlad tried to hold his breath, but his thoughts were already blurring, his vision fogging, and somebody was counting backwards from ten.

He was out before they got past seven.

.:.

Vlad rose from sleep slowly, like a diver rising from the depths. Rain beat against the roof above, but he was warm and the duvet weighed down his limbs with that heavy comfortableness that comes with lots of rest during a period of recovery.

Somebody lay next to him, their breathing slow and heavy. Vlad stirred, opening his eyes to the dim light of his bedroom. In the bed beside him was a boy with shadows under his eyes that matched his hair – voluminous and dark.

Danny blinked as Vlad looked at him. "Hey," the ghost child breathed.

"Hey," Vlad rasped in return. That one word sent an ache through his chest, deep-seated and dangerous. It was the sort of pain that accompanied serious injuries that hadn't finished healing yet but were definitely well on their way.

Danny's fingers were twisted within Vlad's, their bracelets touching. The cords connecting them brushed Vlad's arm. "Why are we still plugged into each other?" he whispered.

"To keep our cores in sync," Danny explained. "You've been asleep for almost a whole day – it's Boxing Day morning."

"So the surgery worked?" Vlad asked. He was so comfortable, so weary. Unless Danny told him to move, he decided that he was going to stay in bed.

The boy lying next to him smiled, and Vlad found himself mentally tracing that mouth, watching the way that Danny's eyes shone with happiness. If he could ever describe peace, it would be what he was feeling right now.

"Yeah," Danny said, "it worked. You're healing all on your own."

Vlad sighed contentedly, welcoming the pull of pain in his chest.

They hadn't died – they were both lying here, alive and filled with power and a new control over the future.

He could finally say it.

"Thank you," Vlad whispered.

"For what?" Danny asked, the corners of his eyebrows almost meeting in that ridiculous scowl.

Vlad chuckled despite the pain it caused – they were here, they were okay, and Danny still had no clue why he was so special to the people around him. "Thank you for saving me."

Danny's fingers tightened around his. "Thanks for letting me do it," he whispered back.

They lay there together, breathing perfectly in sync, as their cores throbbed and the rain beat steadily down.

"Do you still want to move to Mars?" Vlad murmured after a time, opening his eyes again to look at his friend.

"That's a pretty stupid question," Danny retorted with a smirk.

This time it was Vlad who tightened his grasp on Danny's hand. "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers."

Danny sighed. "Let's sort out things on Earth first," he said. "Then we can move anywhere we want."

Vlad gave a small smile of his own.

"I'm glad you rescued me, Badger," he whispered as the rain grew harder and his core beat steadily within him, sending power through his limbs and clarity to his thoughts.

Danny's mouth quirked at the nickname. "It's good to have you back, Fruitloop."

**Author's Note:**

> Artworks inspired by this fic by [theghostof-sherlockholmes](https://theghostof-sherlockholmes.tumblr.com/):  
> [Maddie's heart](https://theghostof-sherlockholmes.tumblr.com/post/107537656637/okay-here-we-go-i-still-dont-know-how-this)  
> [A cover for the fic](https://imgur.com/a/CcJgXhX)


End file.
